

















/^^\/ %*^^*/ V^^*<>* "V*^ 






^..^^ 






♦ AT 



rV '^^ -ysg^^* X -^ "^ ''.^^%^.* 4^ V. -.lias?/ ^ 















«■* ..... •*„ -4,* »•"•*, ^r- n* -•• 



0' .•■•.. •© 



:^^-. '-*.o«' /asr%/ .N^^-. v„/" .-^ 



cP^.^J^'^'^. A^\*:.^/\. /.-J^'A >* 



.-« .^ 



-t^o^ 






♦ .0-' 



i'>^. .^^.^i^y>^ ./»:k-i:.X >*'^:f«s:-.'^ 















•^A0« • 



. ^<^ °^ 




























^o 




/ .N^lfe-. V„/ .'as-. %v*^* .-'^K-. Vo.' 



^ SPEECHES 

OF 

Wendell Phillips Stafford 



1913 



PUBLISHED BY 

ARTHUR F. STONE 

ST. JOHNSBURY. VERMONT 



^^V^^. 






COPYRIGHT 1913 

BY 

ARTHUR F. STONK 



DEC 26 1913 



THE PRESS OF THE CALEDONIAN COMPANY 

St. Johnsbury, Vermont 






To the Memory of my Father 

FRANK STAFFORD 

Without whose training and encouragement I 
should never have attempted public sp>ecch. 



CONTENTS 



Sons in Exile 


1 


A Free Library and its Uses 


3 


Lincoln and His Times 


23 


The Lawyer 


40 


IsraeFs Ideal of Justice 


61 


At Grant's Tomb : a Decoration Address 


65 


One of tke Fourth Estate : Crosby Stuart 




Noyes 


70 


The New Despotism 


74 


A City without Citizens 


82 


Robert Burns : a Poet for the World 


103 


Lake Champlain in History 


133 


Thomas Bartlett: An Old-Time Advocate 


145 


\^ ho Did Sin — This Man or His Parents ? 


154 



Whittier : A Quaker who Became a Martial 



Poet 


159 


The Measure of a Man 


186 


The Puritan Ideal 


191 


On the Armenian Massacre 


202 


A Philanthropist 


213 


The Old Commoner: Thaddeus Stevens 


217 


A Capital of Capitals: The Future of 




Washington 


254 


Four Brothers : A Grave in Arlington 


258 


The Negro and the Nation 


264 


Russia and the Jews 


271 


The Making of Vermont 


277 


The State and its Criminals 


308 



Ann Story : A Woman who Helped to Found 

a State 314 

Wendell Phillips : The Tribune of the People 327 



SPEECHES 



SONS IN EXILE 

From an Address before the Brooklyn Society of Vermonters 

at Pouch Gallery, Brooklyn, N. Y., 

March 27, 1909. 

The sons and daughters of Vermont, no matter 
where their lot is cast, return to her with steps that 
never waver. Or if their feet are bound in other 
paths their thoughts are pilgrims to her dark-green 
hills. We never know how dear she is until we leave 
her. And as we learn to count our years by scores 
instead of one by one, we turn to her more fondly 
still because she keeps the memories of childhood. 
Often, as we sit reading by the winter fire, her 
summer landscape floats across the page; and even 
as we go about our work a vision often comes before 
our eyes, — the hillside orchard, the red farm-house 
hiding in the trees. But most of all when we are 
gathered as we are tonight, when hundreds answer 
to the same deep thrill, when all are lifted by a 
common pride in her great past, — then most of all 
that vision of our mountain State becomes a real 
presence. And, oh, how beautiful she seems ! 

We know tonight the drifted snows lie deep within 
her borders — the winter still is there. But in a few 
weeks more, we know, the lazy, loitering spring 
will come that way with gifts that will make rich 
amends for all her tardiness. She will turn the wil- 
low-wands to gold along the stream-sides. She will 



sprinkle all the meadow-lands with cowslips, and 
weave into the carpet of the woods the mayflower and 
anemone. She will kindle the tops of all the maples 
with little flaming leaves and burning buds. She will 
set Killington and Camel's Hump and Mansfield 
against a sky as blue as Italy's. She will let all the 
rivers take up again their solemn hymns where they 
left off, and let all the boisterous brooks come tumb- 
ling and laughing down the ledges. She will creep up 
all the valleys and ravines with verdure, and lay a 
tender light on all the hill-tops, and make green the 
graves of those that loved us in the days that were. 

Dear little State! not dearer for your loveliness 
than for the memory of those that sleep within your 
bosom, the strong and tender hearts of other days. 
You, too, history has touched with splendor, and, for 
the brave deeds of your sons, has given you a place 
among the hardy and heroic all around the world. "We 
who are gathered here tonight are gathered in your 
honor, and the name we take upon our lips is yours. 



A FREE LIBRARY AND ITS USES 

An Address delivered at the Dedication of the Aldrich 

Public Library in Barre, Vermont, Tuesday, 

September 22, 1908. 

Fellow Citizens: 

The invitation that came to me from the trustees 
of the Aldrich fund to be present and make an 
address on this occasion was, indeed, a very kindly 
and welcome call. And yet I am bound to 
acknowledge, if I may do it without giving offense, 
that a more enticing call, and one that my heart could 
not resist, came to me, not from the Barre of today, 
but from the Barre of thirty-five or forty years ago. 
Your invitation, sirs, had a strange conjuring pow- 
er. It weakened voices that have long been silent. It 
called back figures that have long since fled. It 
suggested scenes that human eyes will never look upon 
again. The wand of the enchanter was waved above 
your noisy, bustling city, and all its obtruding blocks 
of business disappeared. In places where, if we went 
out today, we should only find a screaming engine or a 
groaning derrick, I kept my old appointments with 
the shy and happy woodland gods. Most of you, 
I fear, would need an introduction to the quiet valley 
that I saw. Your network of busy streets shrank back 
to a single sleepy road, with plain white houses 
along either side, with gardens growing to the fence 
and hollyhocks and peonies by the door. I walked 

3 



that street again, or, rather, ran along it, as a bare- 
foot boy is apt to do, looking for Will Lane to go 
a-fishing under Fuller's bridge. 

The old familiar faces were all present. I could 
see Judge Harvey Tilden behind his milk white horse, 
sitting bolt upright, as a judge should always do, and 
making, as it seemed to me, a kind of triumphal 
progress down the street. Nathan Morse was on his 
cobbler's bench, and Tailor Rice was sitting in his 
window. Jule Smalley, in his barn door, was engaged 
in a highly dramatic dialogue with himself. Anjie 
Jackman was runiinating as he walked. Carlos Car- 
penter, his thin lips quivering with sarcastic fun, was 
giving some unlucky citizen a nickname he would 
carry to his grave. Sail Pratt, in faded sunbonnet and 
bulging crinoline, was trudging through the village 
with a dozen frightened but fascinated children at 
her heels. In the fork-shop under the hill the trip 
hammers were keeping up their boisterous rivalry. 
The grist mill at Twing Village was all a-rumble with 
a mellow roar, and all as fragrant as a lily in bloom 
with the fine white dust of wheat. Enos Fuller was 
busy at the foundry. The Whitcomb Brothers of that 
generation were absorbed with their water-wheels and 
flumes. Alf. Lane was putting up somebody's new 
house. Carl Hall was following his dusty drove to 
market. Orange Fifield was whipping up his horse 
to reach his namesake town by night-fall. Deacon 
Gale was keeping his benevolent patrol in the interest 
of school discipline and morals. Gospel Village, true 
to the implications of its name, was heavy with the 
slumber of the just ; and the woolen factory at Jockey 
Hollow was slowly falling to decay. Ah ! that was the 



village I saw, back in the peaceful days before the 
deluge — the deluge of population and prosperity that 
has come upon Barre. I could see it all again. There 
was the hillside pasture where we drove the cows. 
Here was the unmown common where we came to 
play. Up yonder stood the academy, behind imposing 
pillars, where, at the belfry summons, the boys and 
girls of long ago were hurrying in and out. At the 
far end of the village stood the rival institution, then 
very new, whose many twinkling lights at night-time 
gave it the appearance of a chandelier, and led to a 
parody upon its name, — the "Goddard Seminary" 
being changed to the ''Godless Luminary" — a name, 
which, in spite of its irreverence, secretly tickled the 
ears of the orthodox. Carl Benedict's anvil was ring- 
ing where French 's block now stands, and a cluster of 
young faces by the door were watching the showers 
and meteors of flying sparks, trying to look as if they 
were not expecting the pennies they knew his kindness 
could not long withhold. Ira Harrington, gathering 
up his reins, was just starting back to the quarry, 
having, for the fortieth time, confidently maintained 
against all skeptics, that a dazzling future for Barre 
lay hidden in Millstone Mountain's granite seams. 
And just then, in a whirlwind of dust, the yellow 
stage-coach dashed up from Montpelier, with Alf, 
Downing, fortunately sober, on the box. 

I suspect there was no great reading matter in 
the mail-bag that was flung to the sidewalk as they 
stopped. There may have been a Harper's, a 
Scribner's, and possibly, for Parson Tenny, an Atlan- 
tic; and ''Uncle Jake," it was whispered, had 
periodicals from foreign lands. However, there were 



newspapers enough to furnish ammunition for the 
political warfare waged in summer evenings on the 
post office steps and around the cracked and redden- 
ing stove at the old checkered store late into winter 
nights. But the only collection of books for the public 
I ever heard of in those days was the one in the post 
office, jealously guarded by Stillman Wood. It was, 
in the beginning, it seems to me, an agricultural 
library, and was particularly rich in works on natural 
history, freely and startlingly illustrated. In its 
palmy days it mast have numbered fifty or seventy-five 
volumes. At any rate, I recognized in it a prodigious 
improvement on the Sunday School library where I 
had sought mental nourishment, and hailed it mth 
excited interest. When I was old enough to attend 
the academy myself, I saw some books in a tall case 
that stood on the stage in the hall where the school 
assembled. But the glass doors were always kept 
locked, and the approach was guarded by a cross- 
legged stone idol from India. I never saw a book 
taken from, its shelves, and the only one I read through 
the pane by its title was an expurgated edition of 
Byron. As a boy, of course, I much preferred my 
own poor copy, unabridged. There were probably no 
private libraries worth naming outside the lawyers', 
the doctor's and Mr. Spaul ding's. Yet it was an 
intelligent community, self-respecting and exceedingly 
democratic. The snob was quite unknown. The only 
individual I ever heard of who was too proud to carry 
home his own bundle was put to shame by the richest 
man in the village, Leonard Keith, who offered to 
carry it for him. Altogether, it was a comfortable 
quiet valley, nearly answering to Longfellow's 
description of Grand Pre: 

' 6 



"There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in 
abundance." 

It is natural that this should be a day of con- 
gratulation and rejoicing. At last Barre is to have 
a library worthy of its needs. The cares and labors of 
many years are to be rewarded. Large hopes for 
the future are to be awakened and encouraged. It is 
fitting to remember on this day the generous foresight 
of Mr. Aldrich, whose gift made all that has followed 
possible. It is fitting to acknowledge the liberal 
provision by the city, of the perfect site where the 
building stands. It is proper to commemorate the 
work of the various societies, which, like tributary 
streams, have emptied their channels to swell the 
volume of this larger enterprise. It is eminently 
fitting to recall with praise the faithful and efficient 
service of the trustees on whose shoulders the burden 
of responsibility was cast. Gratitude for all that 
has been accomplished, confidence in all that shall be 
achieved — these are the sentiments natural to the 
occasion. I would not introduce a discordant note 
into such a harmony. But there is a use to be made 
of the hour, better than any of these, and I invite your 
considerate attention to the question that forces itself 
again and again upon my mind: What can a public 
library do for this community? It may prove a 
blessing; it may prove of little or no value; it may 
even turn out to be a positive hindrance to the highest 
welfare of those whom it should serve; and all this 
will depend upon how it is conducted by its managers, 
and how it is made use of by the citizens. Herbert 
Spencer, accounted by many the greatest philosopher 
of our age, left as the ripe fruit of his reflection, 



the opinion that free libraries are of no real benefit 
to the world. **Why should we have free libraries," 
he asked, ' ' any more than free bakeries ? Knowledge 
should not be free any more than bread is free. ' ' His 
reason was, if I understand him, that what costs 
nothing is worth nothing. Men do not appreciate 
what is thrust upon them. Moreover, his observation 
had led him to believe that such libraries were 
occupied almost wholly with the circulating of poor 
fiction, and were places where men gathered to turn 
over worthless newspapers and amuse themselves with 
funny pictures. These are grave objections and we 
shall do best if we meet them gravely. 

Ruskin has somewhere a contemptuous word for 
a community that is content to thumb its literature in 
the dirty pages of a circulating library. I have a 
cultivated friend who makes it an invariable rule 
never to read a book that he does not own. "If it 
isn't worth buying, it isn't worth reading," is his 
maxim. How many times it has been shown that the 
books which have done most for mankind are few in 
number and easily within the reach of all! The 
Hebrew scriptures, that have fed the religious life 
and molded the serious thought of the western world 
for twenty centuries — if you cannot afford to buy 
them, the colporteur will supply you and be glad. 
The greatest dramatist that ever pictured human 
passion — ^you may have all that he produced for the 
price of a vaudeville performance. Burns, for less 
than his ''sair-won penny-fee," will sing you such 
songs of love and labor as men had never heard until 
he came. You can buy the Data of Ethics for the cost 
of a good smoke. Darwin will give you, almost for 

8 



the asking, the results of his lifelong searching for 
the origin of man. Let us have done with pretenses. 
You can take the wages of a week's average labor, 
and make your own a library of the brightest, wisest, 
mightiest books the world has ever seen. And, beyond 
all that, it cannot be disputed that we should do well 
to give our days and nights to these. Why should we 
run here and there for the opinions of petty minds, 
when here are the deliverances of undying wisdom at 
our very doors ? Let us have more of the great books 
we are ahvays talking about but never read — less of 
the little books we read but have no desire to talk 
about. Let a man range widely as he may, he will 
come back at last 

"To learn that all the sages said 
Was in the Book his mother read." 

Librarians have told us that eighty per cent, 
of the books taken out are works of fiction and most 
of these not of the highest grade. Science, biography, 
travel, history, philosophy, poetry, and all the other 
books aside from fiction, constitute a bare twenty per 
cent, of the volumes actually used. What a showing ! 
Not to speak scornfully of fiction, but always 
recognizing its high claim on our attention, who 
would care to think that the future of this institution 
would have no better record to disclose? Surely it 
was not for this that Leonard Aldrich left his 
carefully husbanded estate. It was not in the 
contemplation of such results that the trustees and 
other helpers of this enterprise have given it their 
earnest thought and effort. For one, I do not hesitate 
to say that if I believed it could look for no better 

9 



record I should have no heart in the day's exercises, 
and should not be here. I am here because, for one 
thing, I wish to register my conviction that an insti- 
tution of this character may become a radiating 
center, a very dynamo of intellectual power in the 
community. 

New ideas have come to be accepted touching 
the management of libraries and the true functions 
of their keepers. The ideal librarian is no longer a 
watch dog suspiciously defending his charge, but a 
teacher, a helper, a wise, judicious counsellor and 
friend. Books must be where they can be handled 
by readers without the constant interference of any- 
one in charge, where they can be taken down and put 
back without summoning an attendant. It may be 
necessary to keep eyes on watch for the dishonest. 
It may result in the loss of many books in the 
course of the year. It miay make it necessary to 
restrict such freedom, after a time, so as to exclude 
the untrustworthy. But of this I am sure, that, for 
the most profitable use of a library, free and easy 
access to the shelves is indispensable. One may wash 
to take down a hundred books in the examination of 
his subject. He may wish to barely look into a book. 
A glance may tell him what he wants to know or 
tell him the book is not what he needs. He may 
wish to read in it for five minutes or an hour. He must 
be allowed, in certain departments, at least, to browse 
about at his will. I have used libraries, or tried to 
do so, under both systems. I have been chilled by 
the warning, ''No books to be taken from any shelf 
or returned to it except by the librarian or assistant ; ' ' 
and I have spent some of the happiest and most 

10 



productive hours of my life where I had only to put 
out my hand to make acquaintance with the authors 
of all times, A bookseller, I imagine, would have 
but poor success if he should not permit his customers 
to look between the leaves ; and a librarian 's business, 
if not to tempt us to buy books, is to tempt us 
to read them. Charles Sumner was not only an 
orator and a statesman; he was also a scholar, and 
one of the most learned men of his day. It was 
his custom to spend hours in libraries, merely run- 
ning through book after book — taking them do\\Ti, 
glancing at their contents, reading a page here and 
there, and returning them to their places. Of course 
he read a multitude of books with care and 
deliberation — from cover to cover — but by the 
other method he acquainted himself with thous- 
ands he could never read in full. When the time 
came he knew where to go to find his subject treated. 
There are all sorts of books and they are to be used 
in all sorts of ways. As nearly as possible, ha\dng 
due regard to the rights of all, a public library 
should be to each user as free and convenient as 
if it were his o^ti. Then the librarian, or someone 
connected with the library should make it his 
business to stimulate reading on fruitful and inter- 
esting line^. The ideal arrangement would be to 
have a librarian who himself could lecture acceptably, 
from time to time opening up new subjects, arresting 
the attention of readers, arousing their curiosity 
and then showing them where it may be satisfied. 
If the librarian himself cannot fulfill this function, 
there should be every year a series of lectures, 
delivered in the library or elsewhere, but always in 

11 



connection with its work and with a view to invite 
the largest use of it. Classes should be formed for 
the study of timely topics. Here in Barre you have 
a cosmopolitan population, drawn here by the hope 
of bettering their condition from almost every quarter 
of the globe. They will be interested in every variety 
of subject. They must be encouraged to look upon 
this library as a means of education especially adapted 
to their needs, a true university of the people. Some 
of them will be deeply interested in sociology, bring- 
ing with them conceptions of government and law 
fundamentally different from ours. Above all, let 
such subjects be dealt with by able speakers, with 
opportunity to question and reply. A library here 
ought to include the best and soundest as well as the 
freshest books upon those subjects. It ought not 
to shut out those of more radical leaning, only those 
which strike at the foundation of all government 
and counsel crime. If this library does the work 
it ought to do, it will become a center of fermentation, 
keeping the wits of men active, training their minds 
to play freely over many subjects, counteracting 
intolerance, broadening views, and deepening sympa- 
thies, and leading to a general agreement upon 
essential and fundamental truths, while encouraging 
the widest freedom of opinion where variety of 
view is consistent with the safety of the state and 
those deeper interests that pertain to all. It must 
be liberal in its attitude and spirit, ready to welcome 
all sorts and conditions of men. Any man or woman 
of clean hands and decent demeanor ought always 
to find welcome. Until he has been found to 
have abused its trust and confidence no one should 

12 



be debarred. Better a few more dollars spent for 
watchmen, better a few books lost by theft, than 
that the feeling should go abroad among those 
who most need the influence of books that their 
presence is not welcome because some of their number 
have shown themselves ungrateful. It is precisely 
among those where books are most likely to be lost 
and where their coming may seem to be least appre- 
ciated, that the best results will be secured. Out of 
the new blood that has flowed to you from other 
shores may come the quickest and finest intellects 
of the next generation. Blood, Like the soil itself, 
gets worn out by too much cultivation. It is only 
three generations, so it has been said, from shirt- 
sleeves to shirtsleeves. It is the child of lusty 
physical inheritance, now for the first time feeling 
the influence of education and refinement, who is 
always startling the staid and jaded world with some 
fresh proof of genius. It is especially these keen 
and alert young minds that a library like this is 
for. They should be made to feel that it is theirs. 
Thoy should find here the books that will give them 
the true answers to their eager questions, ofl'er them 
the broadest outlook upon life, acquaint them with 
the priceless stores of the world's learning, "the best 
that has been thought and said in the world," books 
that will inspire them with ambition to serve their 
country and their felloAvmen. 

There is another service a library like this can 
render. It can draw attention to the ripe old books 
that lie neglected year by year. So many newspapers, 
so many magazines, so many ''latest novels," the 
press is pouring out, we forget the old true friends 

13 



that comforted the generations before us and ought 
to comfort ours and many more. It will not be 
enough that these fine old books are here. They 
must be exploited. The library must be active, not 
passive. A library will not run itself any more than 
a railroad or a quarry. Ways and means must be de- 
vised to draw attention to these classic and deathless 
pages. Here again I laiow of no better way than 
by inducing some master of letters to come to you 
from time to time, now one and now another, to 
reveal to you the wealth that lies hidden in your 
walls. Make such lectures the event of the year. 
Let the papers give them prominence, and let the 
people know when they are coming. Let a lecture 
on Tennyson or Dante be almost as important in 
their columns as a prize fight or a scandal ! 

Naturally there will be many here who mil take 
a deep interest in science and invention. Why not 
bring here now and then those who can speak with 
authority upon these themes? Will not some gener- 
ous purse be found to supply the means as time goes 
on? Will not someone be moved to provide a fund 
for prizes to be awarded the young readers of this 
library who produce the best essays on given subjects? 
This library ought to become a perfect hive of in- 
dustry. Men, women, children, — all ages and occu- 
pations, should be coming and going like bees among 
the clover. It ought to be the intellectual exchange 
of Barre. Is it too much to expect? Let us take 
courage from today's achievement. Here on her 
granite mountain for a throne, materialism sits 
crowned and sceptered. Where on the face of the 
globe would you look for a community more entirely 

14 



devoted to her service? And yet here we have today 
a proof that mind is more than money, ideas are more 
than granite, education and refinement are more 
prized than machinery or acres. The man who gave 
his fortune to found this library was not himself 
a bookish man. His gift is all the more significant 
and welcome. It was the tribute of a practical man 
to the practical value of books. I can see him still 
as he appeared to my boyish eyes, a huge, rotund 
figure moving along the street, the very embodiment 
of honest, sound unbudging common sense. He was 
no sentimentalist, no dreamer; but he had gone 
through the world with his eyes open, and he had 
the sagacity to discern that in the years to come 
Barre would need such a fountain of intellectual 
life as I have endeavored to describe, and, as far as 
his means would go, he provided for it. It will be 
for others to see that his purpose is carried out, 
his example followed. He was not deceived. He 
knew that there would be thousands in Barre w^ho 
would never enter the door of his library, who, passing 
by, would look upon it as an altar to an unknown 
god. He knew that day after day it would stand in 
the corner of the market place, like wisdom, cry- 
ing aloud in the streets, to the sordid hurrying 
throngs that would give no heed. He knew that 
night after night men would go by its peaceful 
portals to the crowded, noisy dens of vice and de- 
bauchery. He knew that of the many hundreds who 
would come to look or read, only a small proportion 
would choose what was worthiest of their thought. 
But he had insight enough to know that there were 
others who would find these walls a shrine. He 

15 



knew that boys would come here to be quickened to 
honorable service. He knew that old men would find 
here serene and tranquil hours. He knew that busy- 
men would pause to gain an hour of broader reading. 
Children would get here their first glimpse of the 
world's inestimable stores, and breathe-in reverence 
for the great of old. And he knew that here and 
there some chosen spirit would arise, perhaps where 
least expected, to display a kindred genius with the 
authors for whom he gave this home. He knew as 
well as Spencer that men are not apt to value what 
is free; but he was wiser than Spencer, and in this 
action he was more like God, who knows that men will 
spurn the best he offers, yet spreads his bounteous 
blessings wide for all. When Jesus uttered the weight- 
iest condemnation that ever fell upon the ears of men, 
he did not promise them the torments of the damned ; 
he did not speak of pain or torture, tearing limb 
from limb, nor of the fire that burns and 
none shall quench it. He only said, "He that loves 
houses or lands or father or mother or wife or children 
more than me — is not worthy of me!'' There is 
nothing to surpass that sentence. That is what every 
work of genius says to the unappreciating world. 
The man who prefers a comic picture to Raphael's 
Madonna only declares that he is not worthy of her. 
He who would rather read his yellow journal than 
the immortal words of Emerson or Plato merely 
testifies that he is not worthy of them; and the men 
who will pass by the glorious treasures of this library 
to the piling up of treasures of the world that perishes 
will write upon their foreheads plain for all to read, 
''I was not worthy of them." But to those who 

16 



enter and linger here how sweet will be the happiness 
— how ample the reward! 

Here (let the tumult rage!) 

Toil need not be all toll nor grief all tears; 
Here youth may win the tranquil light of age, 

And age forget its years. 

''He who can read and write and cipher," said 
a teacher, ''holds in his hands the keys of the king- 
dom. ' ' And if you will stop to think of it, is it not 
so? When education has once delivered those keys 
into our hands, it has throwTi upon us the responsi- 
bility of deciding whether — and what — we will possess 
and rule. We may use the keys or not at our 
pleasure. We may only jingle them in men's ears. 
We may use them to enter some petty province. 
Or we may push on our victorious invasion like 
Alexander, but with the unconcerned assurance that 
whatever reahiis we rule we shall never have cause 
to weep for want of other worlds to conquer. The 
possibilities are boundless. 

To read and w^rite and cipher. The teacher 
was speaking with eyes upon the fature. He might 
have beet spealdng with eyes upon the past ; and then 
those keys would have appeared to him as trophies, 
the splendid symbols of achievement won by un- 
counted ages of human effort. To read! But some- 
thing must be written before there can be anything 
to read; and so the two must have come together, 
the setting down of some sign or symbol of thought 
by one, to be taken in and comprehended by another. 
By what age-long and laborious processes was this 
simple fact achieved, that man could communicate 

17 



his meaning to those far distant or to those that should 
come after, without the intervention of the spoken 
word? In what strange and crude attempts it had 
its orgin, — by the piling of one rude stone upon 
another to commemorate some great event; by the 
carving of grotesque hieroglyphics on the rocks and 
tombs, by the drawing of coarse pictures on the skins 
of animals or the bark of trees, and last of all by 
letters! Who is not awed when he thinks upon it? 
Who wonders that Cadmus was sometimes ac- 
counted a god ? 

All that man has ever done or tried to do, all that 
he has thought or dreamed or felt, all that he has 
learned, by painful groping, of this universal house 
in which he lives, has been embedded or enshrined 
in books. Whispered traditions of the antique world 
that lingered in the ears of early man till he had 
learned the art of writing; legends hoary with the 
grave-dust of incalculable time; impressions on his 
primeval consciousness, which countless years could 
not efface, of catastrophes that moved his solid world 
from its foundation, — deluges that swept away his 
mighty tribes like insects; simple adventures that 
shook his untaught heart with fear, when nature's 
friendliest, most familiar powers were weird and 
unexplained, — when the ocean rolled an insurmount- 
able barrier before his feet, or hid itself in mists 
and awed him with the terrors of a world unseen; 
vestiges of peoples that lived and reigned and passed 
from sight and left no chronicles; fierce iliads of his 
long-forgotten wars, and odyssies of his first strange 
wanderings around fearful shores; migrations that 
unpeopled continents; battles in which whole nations 

18 



disappeared; temples where unheard-of gods were 
worshiped; palaces and pyramids, the homes and 
tombs of unremembered kings; traces of man's first 
weak fumbling efforts to save some fragments of the 
wisdom he had gained for generations that should 
follow; myth and memory commingled, fact and 
fable interfused ; little by little some believable report, 
some faint, far semblance of the thing that was ; and 
then at last the Adde unfolding regions of historic 
truth ! For all these teachings we must go to books. 
But not for these alone ! The seers and poets — those who 
have heard the notes of music from another realm; 
sensitive spirits, to whom the beauty of the world 
was a positive pain, on whose hearts the hills have 
laid the spell of their religious silence, over whose 
eyes the sea has woven the glamour and ever-chang- 
ing cliarm of her sweet sorcery — these have 
bequeathed to us their souls in books; — and they 
to whom the hidden secrets of the heart were like an 
open scroll, whose intuitions touched the source of 
things, whose voices so accorded wdth the song of 
Fate that they could teach us all we need to know 
of life and death and destiny! Thank God, thank 
God for books ! 

What possibilities of learning and enlightenment 
will be presented in this library ! Think how many 
departments of life it will embrace. Here will be the 
history of man from the first ''syllable of recorded 
time." What an impressive spectacle the history 
of the world presents, the mixed and wondrous 
pageantry of human life! How the contemplation 
of it teaches us modesty in our claims for ourselves, 
our country and our time! Why should we take 

19 



ourselves so seriously when ages upon ages have 
passed with the same interests and hopes as ours, 
attended by the same sweet joys, the same bitter 
disappointments? We see at last that the world is 
not run on our account, that the race is one great 
living whole and we but smallest parts of it. We 
find it easier to accept the profound saying of the 
imperial stoic, that "Nothing is good for the bee 
that is not good for the hive. ' ' The study of history 
is not chiefly to teach us names and dates and hap- 
penings, but to subdue our spirits, — to lead us to 
appreciate our true position in the scheme of things. 
So too of science. The more we ponder its pages 
the more childlike we become, — the more deeply im- 
pressed with the inviolability of law. We feel for 
ourselves the infrangible links that bind causes to 
effects. We grow rational, amenable to the commands 
of nature. We cease to think that we must have 
our own way, and recognize the everlasting necessity 
of obedience. Travel and exploration teach us how in- 
finitely varied are the customs and standards of 
men; how all have been molded by their surround- 
ings; how in the same circumstances we should have 
been as they. We compare ourselves with others. 
We grow skeptical of our own superiority. We 
suspect we may learn something even from those 
we have been accustomed to despise. Even more obvi- 
ously and directly do the masterpieces of poetry, phil- 
osophy and fiction lead our minds to the acceptance of 
true and just ideas concerning ourselves and our 
place and duty in the world. Not only do we grow 
humble in the presence of works of genius w^hich we 
must instantly acknowledge we can never rival or 

20 



approach, but the sublime ideas which they inculcate, 
the truth concerning responsibility and destiny, the 
connection between character and fate, the moral 
meaning of the universe as it reveals itself to the ap- 
prehension of the human soul, — all these reflections 
tend to make us men and women who can live 
together and work together for common ends, with 
common aspirations and ideals. It is because a library 
may have this effect on a conununity that the dedication 
of it becomes a civic event of the first magnitude, worthy 
to draw men together from the absorbing tasks of 
life, and worthy to call the highest officers of city 
and state to signalize and honor the occasion. 

''Blessed are the poor in spirit," said the wisest 
teacher that ever spoke. And if these shelves of books 
have any mission, it is to fulfill that beatitude in 
the lives of their readers. "When men lose their 
narrow-minded confidence that their personal views 
must necessarily be right; when they enlarge the 
borders of their minds for the reception of other 
men's ideas; when they recognize the supremacy 
of truth, and take for their motto, "Not authority 
for truth, but truth for authority;" when they be- 
come charitable and tolerant towards their neighbors, 
hospitable to new conceptions, watchful for self 
improvement, ready to sink their private interests 
in the common good; then they become the material 
out of which a great and lasting nation may be built. 
This is the use of books, — not to make scholars, but 
to make citizens; not to make book- worms, but to 
make men; not to increase the pride of learning, 
but to foster that fine humility of spirit which is 
the first condition to the fulfillment of all whole- 

21 



some ideals of knowledge and power. If the library 
we dedicate with so much pride and hopefulness 
today shall some day justify that hopefulness and 
pride, it vnll be because, by fostering that spirit, it 
ministered to those ideals. 



22 



LINCOLN AND HIS TIMES 

A Centennial Address delivered before the Lawmen' Club of 
Buffalo, N. r., February 13, 1909. 

We are met in memory of a great man and a great 
epoch. It is impossible to appreciate the one unless 
we understand the other. It is always an impressive 
sight when an idea takes possession of the millions and 
'Snelds the living mass as if it were its soul." We 
seem to watch the very working of the invisible 
Power that brings all things to pass. You may find 
no moral code in nature, no sign that she cares for 
man; you may regard the material universe as mov- 
ing on its eternal, way in sublime indifference to our 
brief concerns ; but there is still a universe of thought 
in which we live and move and have our being, and 
here ideas come forth at times like gods, shaping the 
destiny of the race. 

In fact, the only world we are sure of is the 
world of ideas. It is only principles that never pass 
away. You can never make a history out of a column 
of figures. It is not an account book — it is an epic. 
It is a tale of heroism. It is a chant of victory. 
The divinity of man is the open secret of history. 
There never was an age so dark but the soul of 
some man blazed in the darkness like a star. 

The land we love was born of a sublime faith 
in human nature. It was born of the conviction 
that man had become of age, that he had been under 

23 



guardians long enough, and that ^4t is safe to trust 
a man with all the rights Grod gave him. ' * Despotism 
said: Man is weak, he must be tended. Democracy 
replied: Man is strong, he can stand alone. Despot- 
ism said: Man is mean, he must be watched. Dem- 
ocracy replied : Man is noble, he may be trusted. 

The state is not made out of men. It is made out 
of man. It is made out of his faith, his aspiration, 
his courage, his devotion. It is man himself magni- 
fied, transfigured. The nation has a being of its own. It 
has its own conscience and its own ideal. We do not 
make our ideals — our ideals make us. America did 
not chose the great doctrine of equal rights; that 
immortal truth chose America. It has molded her 
from beginning; it will mold her unto the end, or, 
if it cannot, it will cast her off with the wreckage and 
refuse of the past and take up some other nation 
that is worthy. 

''We hold these truths to be self-evident, that 
all men are created equal, — that governments derive 
their just powers from the consent cf the governed." 
That pledge was given in the hour of danger. It 
was coupled with an appeal "to the supreme 
Judge of the world for the rectitude of our inten- 
tions." It became a part of the consciousness of the 
nation. Independence was won — the peril was passed 
— should the vow be kept? But side by side with 
that stood another question : Should we continue to be 
a nation at all, or should the old confederation fall 
to pieces? Slavery was here. Men thought it could 
not last, but it was here. We could not have a 
Union at all unless slavery was protected. That 
was the price. The price was paid. If you plant 

24 



an acorn in a vase, the acorn will die or else the vase 
will crack. We planted the Declaration in the 
Constitution. One was the real life of the people, 
the other was the form of government we had 
adopted. They were utterly inconsistent. The Dec- 
laration was freedom, the Constitution was slavery. 
The Declaration was duty, the Constitution was con- 
venience. The collision between them made the whole 
tragedy of our first century. The coming of war 
was as certain as fate. 

There were three factors. Here was slavery. 
It was not more strongly entrenched in the feudalism 
of the South than in the money interest and bigoted 
opinion of the North. It allied itself with the 
doctrine of Calhoun. It called to its aid that brilliant 
political leadership that had its way at Washington 
for sixty years. That was the first factor. Here was 
nationality, — reverence for the Constitution. It was 
not stronger in the North itself than in some sections 
of the South. It had its embodiment in Webster. 
It found its noblest voice in his ''massive and sono- 
rous'' speech. It was a vast flood of patriotic 
sentiment. It began far back in the depths of our 
history and rose year by year with the gathering 
strength of a splendid and aspiring people until it 
poured its resistless tide across the continent. It 
held the Union so dear that it defended slavery itself 
for the sake of the Union, even while it abhoiTed it 
in its heart. That was the second factor. But there 
was a third. It was abolitionism. It was the 
Declaration of Independence incarnate. It was the 
old irreconcilable conscience of New England, fear- 
ing not the face of man, ready to see the Union 

25 



dissolved, yes, even demanding its dissolution that 
freedom might have way. It began, obscure and 
despised, ''the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
make straight in the desert a highway for our 
Go'd!" In the whole history of human thought 
there is nothing more thrilling and dramatic than 
the sight of abolitionism, that fierce flame of the 
spirit, piercing the inert mass, burning unquenchabiy 
through thirty years, until it had divided North 
from South, and brought them together with the 
crash of civil war, in the midst of which slavery 
itself went down to its own place It ought to be 
enough to teach us once for all that ideals of right 
and duty once aroused play with the dead weight 
of selfish opposition as the cyclone plays with a hand- 
ful of mthered leaves. 

Lincoln's election was the doom of slavery. 
South Carolina was right when she read it so. It 
did not mean, as some pretended, that slavery would 
be interfered with in the States. But it did mean 
that slavery would not gain another foot of soil — 
the territories would be free. It did mean that the 
government at Washington, which for two genera- 
tions had obeyed the voice of the slave power, would 
obey that voice no longer: the scepter had departed 
from that Judah and the lawgiver from between 
his feet. It did mean that, hemmed in on every 
side by liberty, slavery would eventually die, as the 
statesmen of the elder day expected and intended 
that it should. 

"When the war began men thought the issue 
was union; but they were deceived. The real issue 
was freedom. The war could never have been won 

26 



upon the issue of union. Lincoln was captain and 
his duty was to save the ship — to save it or go down 
with it. He was lashed to the mast. He was bound 
to the Constitution — the Constitution as it was. 
In his view he had no right to abolish slavery if 
he could, unless it became necessary in order to save 
the Union. That was man's side. But from God's 
side it W'as the other way. It was slavery that had 
to be got rid of. If the Union could do it, it could 
live ; if not, it would have to die. So when the people 
were ready to support emancipation they were ready 
to win — not before. Lincoln's preendnent fitness for 
his part lay in this, that he was a perfect type of 
the great body of the people on the Union side. Both 
hated slavery; both were set as the hills against the 
further spread of it ; but neither could see any con- 
stitutional way to interfere with its existence in 
the states. Both traveled the same road of thought 
and feeling; both saw at the same instant when the 
time had come to act. As a mere matter of law it 
might have answered to have set the slaves free in 
the seceding states as soon as it became necessary 
to take up arms at all. But for the president to 
have done so then would have been w^orse than use- 
less for the people would not have ratified his act. 
The border states, themselves slave holders, would 
have followed their sisters into the Confederacy and 
the Union cause would have been lost. There was 
nothing but to wait until the country saw that 
emancipation was demanded, not only as nn {ict of 
justice but also as a military measure But when 
at last the proclamation came, how it strenerthened 
the hands of the North ! The South was brave, 

27 



energetic, sagacious; but she had written it in her 
constitution that human slavery should never cease 
nor be abolished in any part of her domain. As 
long as she was fighting with an antagonist who like- 
wise defended slavery the odds were not unequal. 
But when she found herself facing an opponent 
pledged to freedom, what sagacity, what energy, 
what gallantry could enable her to win? From that 
moment she fought against the stars in their courses. 
Holmes sang of the conflict — 

*' *Tis the old slave-god battling for his crown, 
And Freedom fighting with her visor down." 

And so it was at first. But from the moment of 
emancipation all that was changed, — it was Freedom 
fighting with her visor up, and the terrific beauty 
of her face was worth a thousand armies. 

The love of Union and the love of liberty — 
when these two joined hands once more no wonder 
they swept all before them. You can gauge the 
strength of Niagara, you can w^eigh the fall of a 
planet, you can measure the speed of the whirlwind, 
but you can never calculate the unprisoned power 
of moral sentiment. 

It was not men who were fighting: it was ideas. 
It was a narrow dogma of state rights against the 
grand ideal of national sovereignty. But it was more 
than that. It was feudalism against freedom. It 
was the middle ages against the nineteenth century. 
It was a land where labor was despised against a 
land where labor was enthroned. It was rank and 
caste against the Declaration of Independence. 

It is a mistake to imagine that the main course 

28 



of human events can be turned aside even by as 
great a man as Lincoln. A power was at work in 
whose mighty hands Lincoln himself was nothing 
but a tool. It was the power that has been working 
here from the beginning. It was the power that will be 
working here when you and I are gone. It was the 
power whose purpose is that all men shall be free. 
To show you that I have not advanced a hand's 
breadth beyond the position held by the man whose 
birth we celebrate, I might quote from speech after 
speech of his, but let me read instead this letter, less 
well known, which tells its own story : 

Springfield, 111., April 6, 1859. 
To H. L. Pierce and Others: 

Gentlemen: — Your kind note inviting me to attend 
a festival in Boston, on the 28th instant, in honor ot 
the birthday of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. 
My engagements are such that I cannot come. 

Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago two 
great political parties were first formed in this country, 
that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them and 
Boston the headquarters of the other it is both curious 
and interesting that those supposed to descend politically 
from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be 
celebrating his birthday in their own original seat and 
empire, while those claiming political descent from him 
have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere. 

Remembering, too, that the Jefferson party formed 
upon the supposed superior devotion to the personal 
rights of men, holding the rights of property to be 
secondary only and greatly inferior, and assuming that 
the so-called democracy of today ara the Jefferson, and 
their opponents the anti-Jefferson party, it will be 
equally interesting to note how completely the two have 
changed hands as to the principles upon which they 
were originally supposed to be divided. The Democracy 

29 



of today hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely 
nothing, when in conflict with another man's right 
of property; Republicans, on the contrary, are for both 
the man and the dollar, but in case of conflict the 
man before the dollar. 

I remember being very much amused at seeing 
two partially intoxicated men engaged in a fight with 
their great-coats on, which fight, after a long and rather 
harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself 
out of his own coat and into that of the other. If 
the two leading parties of this day are really identical 
with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams they 
have performed the same feat as the two drunken men. 

But, soberly, it is no child play to save the principles 
of JefEerson from total overthrow in this nation. One 
would state with great confidence that he could convince 
any sane child that the simple propositions of Euclid 
are true, but nevertheless he would fail, utterly, with 
one who should deny the definitions and axioms. 

The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and 
axioms of free society, and yet they are denied and 
evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly 
calls them "glittering generalities." Another bluntly 
calls them "self-evident lies." And others insidiously 
argue that they apply to "superior races." These ex- 
pressions, differing in form, are identical in object 
and effect — the supplanting the principles of free gov- 
ernment and restoring those of classification, caste 
and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of 
crowned heads plotting against the people. They are 
the vanguard, the miners and sappers of returning des- 
potism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate 
us. This is a world of compensation; and he who would 
be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those 
who deny freedom to others deserve it not for them- 
selves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. All 
honor to Jefferson — to the man who, in the concrete 
pressure of a strugle for national independence by a 
single people, had the coolness, forecast and sagacity 

30 



to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an 
abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and 
so embalm it there that today and in all coming daya 
it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very 
harbingers of reappearing tryanny and oppression. 
Your obedient servant, 

A. LINCOLN 

I do not pretend that the Declaration has been 
fully realized in the life of this people. I admit that 
in large regions of the land today political equality 
is still an empty name. But the end is not yet. 
In the long pilgrimage of liberty what is forty years * 
It is only a watch in the night. Political equality 
is absolute and eternal justice, and justice is the will 
of God — it cannot fail. All men are equally bound 
to obey the law? Then all men have an equal right 
to say what the law shall be — all men, rich and poor, 
high and low, learned and ignorant, good and bad, 
white and black — all men. There is no half-way house 
between despotism and democracy. If intelligence 
would be safe, let it give ignorance the light. If 
virtue would be safe, let it lift vice to its own 
level. If wealth would be safe, let it treat poverty 
with justice. When God made His world He made 
democracy inevitable. 

The people have never had a government before. 
Is it strange that they flock to it from all corners 
of the earth? Nobody pretends it is perfect. No- 
body knows better than the people themselves how 
inefficient it sometimes proves. Yet they love it be- 
cause they know it is theirs. Upon their faultiest 
institution the}^ look wdth the irrepressible pride 
Touchstone acknowledged when he presented Audrey : 

31 



''An ill-favored thing, but my own!*' If you doubt 
the genuineness of their attachment wait until free 
government is assailed again, and you shall see the 
old Vesuvius once more in action. They may seem 
to hold their privileges lightly, but if you want to 
know whether they are really regarded, try to take 
the least of them away ! If all you want is a smooth- 
running machine, absolute monarchy is the best that 
ever was devised. But if you want the pulse-beat 
of intelligent loyalty in every movement you must 
build your government out of the brains and hearts 
of all the people. And that takes time; that means 
education; it means blunders and embarassment ; but 
meanwhile you secure a state that cannot be over- 
thrown, and every inch once gained is gained forever. 
Fisher Ames said that a monarchy is a man-of-war, 
beautiful in motion, irresistible when under way, but 
a single hidden rock sends her to the bottom: while 
a democracy is a raft — always in trouble — ^your feet 
always wet, but nothing can sink her. We have built 
on the sound judgment, the incorruptible integrity 
of men in the mass. Life and liberty have yet found 
no citadel so safe as the conscience of twelve men 
drawn from the body of the people. Our safety 
lies neither at the top nor at the bottom, but in 
that great body of sober industry that lies between. 
These are the people. They are not rich enough to 
be afraid of an income tax nor poor enough to run 
after socialism for the promise of its loaves and fishes. 
They are not wise enough to look down on the 
Declaration of Independence nor foolish enough to 
believe the Millennium is coming next week on 
Thursday. They know that this government of 

32 



theirs, poor and imperfect as it is, stands for all 
that has been achieved thus far in the world-old 
struggle for liberty under law. They are not to be 
terrorized by labor nor overawed by capital, and they 
will pulverize union and trust in the same mortar 
if they ever become convinced that individual liberty 
is actually in peril. 

It is not for us to know the times or the seasons 
which the Father of all things has kept in His own 
hands, but of this we may be sure: the race that 
hails from Runnymede and Bunker Hill is not go- 
ing to lie down under any form of tyranny. It 
will not take back the Declaration of Independence. 
That sublime document was written long ago in the 
blood of the Revolution. It had to be written once 
more in the blood of the Civil War. God grant, 
it need never be written again in color so costly, 
but if the need should arise, then, as once and twice 
before, it shall be done ! 

We need not shut our eyes to the follies and 
abuses of our time. We cannot deny that public 
life is here and there corrupt. We know that trusts 
are now and then betrayed. But these signs are 
superficial and we believe they are transient. The 
heart of the nation is sound. Its instincts and in- 
tentions are honest and wholesome; and it is the 
real character of a people, not its occasional slips and 
falls, that determines its fate. These things are but 
the froth and scum — they are only the driftwood 
and noisome weeds that gather in the eddies and 
cumber and defile the river's banks. Out in mid- 
stream the great, free, clear current of national life 
sweeps on to its destiny. Only get near enough to 

33 



see and feel the tremendous current of our national 
life and purpose, — the obstacles in its course, even 
the lofty landmarks upon its shores, sink into in- 
significance. You feel only the majestic stream of 
Anglo-Saxon liberty, proceeding from its far-off 
sources in the German forests, gathering force from 
Runny mede, from Naseby, from our own great Rev- 
olution and sweeping onward to its shining goal — 
to that bright ocean of universal brotherhood and 
peace which is one day to surround the world. Faith- 
less indeed must that man be whose study of the 
great ages and examples of his race permits him to 
doubt whether the guiding is from above. I believe 
in the capacity of the American people to solve every 
problem its duty brings before it. For every great 
hour the great man is bom. Out of the loins of the 
nation shall spring every son of strength she needs. 
To 1775 came Washington, and to 1861 — to the hour 
of futile voices and failing arms, came the incom- 
parable statesman whose deathless fame has brought 
us here today. 

The time is holy: it belongs to memory and to 
love. A hundred years ago the man was born whose 
name is music in all hearts that love their country 
or their kind. We cannot speak of him in 
measured terms. For other men we weigh our words 
and with a scrupulous hand we count the tribute of 
our praise, but not for him. Good measure, pressed 
down, shaken together and running over do men 
give into his bosom, for as he measured unto others 
it is measured to him again. Fame lets her trumpet fall 
to pay him the more tender homage of her tears; 



34 



and Love kneels down and breaks her box of costly 
ointment for his feet. 

Today we think of all that came to pass between 
his birth of penury and his death of pain. We 
see the poor log cabin in the clearing where his eyes 
first met the light of day. And then we see 
that fated room in Tenth Street where hands shak- 
ing with horror have brought him in to die. We 
see it suddenly crowded with officers of state, and 
in the first deep hush of death we hear the solemn 
words of Stanton, *'Now he belongs to the ages." 

And then we ask "How did he come to be? 
What were the forces that took up that low-born 
child and as with plastic fingers molded him into 
the greatest ruler of men the world has ever seen?" 
For what is it to conquer kingdoms and compel 
the wills of men to yield to yours? What is that 
to the thing he did? — winning the reason and the 
heart of millions until, as the meek flock follows the 
faithful shepherd, the nation was ready to follow 
his rod and staff into the valley of the shadow of 
death, fearing no evil! 

"Whence did he come?" we ask; and the ques- 
tioned years answer us in pictures. 

They show us a half -clad boy in the red flare of 
his pine torch, reading — ^painfully spelling out the 
pages of his borrowed book. We look again, and now 
there is a tall young woodsman driving the shivering 
wedges into the walnut logs or meeting the best 
muscle of the prairie in the wrestler's ring. 

The scene changes, and now we are watching 
a long-limbed boatman on the bosom of a mighty 
river, piloting his flat, ungainly craft through golden 

35 



days and under the still stars mare than a thousand 
miles to market. We see him wandering in the 
crescent city of the far, far south. We find him 
leaning in the corner of the auction-place where 
trembling families are bought and sold. Husband is 
torn from wife, mother from child, before his eyes. 
We mark the speechless anguish furrowing his face 
as the full meaning of the brutal system sinks into 
his soul. 

Again the scene changes ; and now he is at home 
among the neighbors, taking his kind part in all 
their plain affairs. We hear their jokes, their stories, 
their debates. We follow as they take him up in 
proud and loving hands and push him out into the 
world, their champion and leader. 

Now he is studying law. With clear eyes and 
unspoiled brain he is mastering the few great books 
that hold the garnered msdom of the race. We see 
him ponder earnestly and long, teachable as a child, 
open as the day, tenderly in love mth what is right. 

He is standing up in court, defending the cause 
he gave his heart to. We see the revelation come 
that he is wrong. His client has deceived him. The 
case is rotten at the core. His huge strength fails. 
We see him sink into his chair and hang his head, 
unable to contend against the truth. 

We watch him as he goes along the street, awk- 
ward, ill-clad, a laugh-provoking, laughter-loving 
giant, with the shadow of all human sorrow haunting 
his deep eyes. ''Old Abe, old honest Abe," we hear 
men say; and something seems to catch us in the 
throat. 

Once more the scene changes; and now we see 

36 



this raw-boned hewer of fence-rails, this ring-master 
of rude country wit and sport, the center of ten 
thousand earnest faces where he is matching 
himself against the most powerful debater of his time. 
We see him hold his own. We hear his statement 
of the question, clear as day, the laugh that greets 
the unanswerable story, the reason that goes home 
to every heart. We feel the unbound majesty of 
manhood as the towering form is lifted with the in- 
spiration of his lofty theme. 

The eyes of the nation are upon him now. The 
plain folk are beginning to understand him — they 
are taking the true measure of the man. With 
the deliberate emphasis of fate we hear him say: 
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. This 
nation cannot endure permanently half slave and 
half free." Once more we follow as the common 
people lift him high in proud and loving hands. 
They have placed him in the presidential chair. 
Heaven help him now, for he is wrestling with 
problems the darkest and most dangerous soldier or 
statesman ever had to solve! Untrained in war, yet 
set amidst the greatest civil war the world has 
known, and charged with its support and guidance. 
We see him contending with hatred and deceit in 
foreign councils, with contusion in the congress, 
with jealousy in the cabinet, with weakness and folly 
in the field, with plots and counterplots on every 
hand, bending under such a load of grief and care 
as few have ever borne. We hail him as he comes tri- 
umphant out of all ; and even then, while he is gather- 
ing North and South, like two death-wounded sons, in- 
to his lo^ang arms, we see his head fall forward on his 

37 



breast. The victim has been offered up — the great, 
kind life is closed. 

The years are true. That was the road he came 
by: those were the forces that fashioned the strong 
nature for its fearful task. But is that all? The 
same road was traveled by his fellows ; the same forces 
were at work on them. How did it come to pass there 
was no other like him? The secret of his coming still 
remains unsolved. When all is pondered we can only 
say that out of those eternal depths of being that gave 
us Alfred, Milton, Cromwell, Washington, he also 
came, in answer to our need. 

Men marvel at the power with which he spoke, 
but the reason is as obvious as the summer sun. His 
speech had the first quality of greatness — it was true. 
It had the second quality of greatness — ^it was clear. 
It had the third quality of greatness — it was earnest. 
The three graces of eloquence are these, and sister 
they have none. Clearness and truth go naked, but 
earneslness puts on the rainbow-robe of imagination. 
When feeling is intense it clothes itself in figures. So 
it was with him. In moments of profound emotion he 
had the gift of tongues and uttered himself in 
parables. Once in the speech at Springfield, once 
in each of the inaugurals and in all he said upon 
the field of Gettysburg, he rose to the sublime plane 
of Hebrew scripture, and spoke for all time as the 
inspired prophet of his people. 

Most wonderful, most fortunate of men ! You 
saved a nation and you freed a race. God put the 
pen into your band and said "Strike out of this 
people 's law that foul word. Slavery, and write instead 
the word whose every letter is a sun. Liberty!" And 

38 



you obeyed Him. All hearts shall hold you dear. All 
tongues shall call you blessed. And while the mighty 
prairies that gave you to the nation shall unroll for 
the glad eyes of men the green of seedtime and the 
harvest gold your memory shall not fail ; but millions 
of your countrymen will say, as we say now, ' ' Thank 
God for our great Lincoln ! ' ' 



39 



THE LAWYER 

Given before the Bar Associations of Vermont, South Caro^ 

Una and West Virginia, as well as at various 

other Legal Gatherings, 

I want to speak to you for a little while about the 
lawyer. Not about lawyers in general, nor about 
any lawyer in particular, but about the law}-er, — 
the ideal of our profession. I suppose even la^vyers 
may be permitted to have an ideal. As we speak 
of the philosopher, the mathematician, the inventor, 
I presume we may speak of the lawyer. If the 
perfect lawyer has never really existed, neither has the 
perfect artist, musician, or statesman. It is one of 
the proofs of man's essential greatness that he has 
never satisfied himself in any direction. Yon re- 
member Emerson's pregnant inquiry, ''Man com- 
plains that his life is mean; but how did he find out 
that it is mean?" After all it is we ourselves who 
erect the standard we fall short of. It is only out 
of our own mouths that we can be condemned. 

The ideal lawyer must be adequately endowed 
by nature, fully informed by study, perfectly dis- 
ciplined by practice, open-eyed to his opportunity, 
and loyal to his trust. 

There are lawyers by nature just as there are poets 
by nature. They are endowed with two great gifts; 
one is intellectual, the other moral. One is the power 
to perceive the true relations of things, and the other 

40 



\ 



is the disposition to see justice done. This ability 
to see the true relations in which things stand to each 
other — what is it but common sense inagnified ? And 
who will not admit that common sense is always a 
gift of nature? If you know of any college that 
can confer an honest degree in common sense, let 
me know — I want to send my boy there. It can't 
be done. If he was born w4th it the school will 
give it breadth and power. If he \^as born mtliout 
it the school will only make the deficiency conspicu- 
ous. The Spaniards have a proverb, ' ' A fool is never 
a great fool until he knows Latin." We have all 
seen lawyers who would have been stronger if they 
had relied more on their reason and less on their 
reading. Even on the bench I have known men who 
would have been better judges if they had been poorer 
lawyers. When all is said it is mother- wit that runs 
the world. Probably you laughed awhile ago, as I 
did, over that story in the Law Review concerning 
a famous jurist who was fording a little brook in 
his chaise and trying to wet the dry wheels by 
backing again and again into the stream, and find- 
ing that each time he wet only the same part of the 
circumference. An old darkey observing his efforts 
ventured to help him by turning the wheel round 
and round in the water until the felloe and spokes 
were all wet. '*I never thought of that," said the 
absent-minded judge. He must have been greatly 
consoled by the reply: *'0h, well, some folks just 
nat'lly has mo' sense than others, anyhow." 

How often we have occasion to return to that 
profound saying of Bacon, ''Books teach not their 
own use, but that is a wisdom without them and 

41 



above them won by observation/' It was common 
sense that made the law, and it is eomm.on sense that 
must apply it. In the war between our states a 
Massachusetts regiment was to be transported by 
train. The locomotive had broken down. ''Is there 
any man here that knows how to mend this engine?" 
asked the Colonel. A private stepped out of the 
ranks and patted the machine, sajdng, ''I ought to; 
I made her." That is what happens when the real 
lawyer puts his hand to the law. Some of the best 
lawyers were never admitted to the bar. More than 
once I have been consulted by some country m.agis- 
trate, some backwoods justice of the peace, constable, 
or plain farmer, who has sho^vn such a clear percep- 
tion of principles, such a firm grasp of the situation, 
that I have felt like saying, "Why do you come to 
me for counsel? It is I that should learn of you." 
Of course, there are some questions that depend for 
their solution upon technical learning; but they are 
not a large proportion. Barring these, I believe it is 
possible to state any correct judgment in terms 
that will satisfy the common mind I always dis- 
trust a decision that cannot be made intelligible to 
the ordinary understanding. When Marshall was de- 
livering one of his subtile, far-reaching opinions a 
political opponent whispered to his companion, "It's 
wrong, all wrong." "Yes," replied his colleague, 
"but the man does not live that can point out 
wherein it is wrong." I do not pretend to say that 
the criticism was just in that instance. I don't re- 
member what the instance was. But when that is 
the impression left upon a fair and candid mind, — 
a feeling that the argument may be right, but that 

42 



the result is wrong, — the probability is that the opin- 
ion is wrong. If it is not wrong there has been a failure 
to put it on the true ground. Luke P. Poland, of 
Vermont, was one of the best judges and legislators 
we ever had. A neighbor of his, not a lawyer, had 
been elected justice of the peace. The judge said 
to him, ''I will give you a little advice. You will 
get along well enough if you never give any reason 
for your decisions. You are a pretty sensible fellow, 
and nine times out of ten your judgments will be 
right, but if you try to tell why, the chances are 
3^ou will make yourself ridiculous." The true texts 
are those that shine by their own light. The sound 
judgment has a way of justifying itself even to the 
man in the street. It is the business of learning to 
make itself plain to the unlearned. Greatness can 
afford to be simple; and the highest wisdom uses the 
homeliest language. It is weakness and uncertainty 
that take refuge in obscure phrases. Have I not 
read of some sort of fish that secures its escape from 
its enemy by diffusing an inky substance through 
the water? Read the great judgments of Mansfield, 
of Marshall, of Gibson, of Shaw. How they com- 
mend themselves to the unsophisticated reason ! Take 
one of Ben Franklin's sayings, one of ^sop's fables, 
one of liincoln's stories — how they find their way to 
the hearts and understandings of the masses! 
Choate uesd to say that Webster's words passed 
current like coin among the people. So do the plain- 
dealing words of Theodore Roosevelt today. Law 
is not something technical, something that smells 
of the lamp and belongs to the closet. Law is noth- 
ing stable, nothing desirable unless it is the sifted 



and garnered common sense of the race. You need 
never tremble for that kind of law. It is a tub that 
can stand on its own bottom. A code that can be 
understood and apppreciated only by a class or a 
profession may fail, but a law that makes its appeal 
to the good sense and honest instincts of men at 
large can never fail. For a sound legal judgment 
is moral as well as mental. It is not enough to see 
things as they are: the great la^vyer sees how they 
ought to be. His love of justice is as strong as his 
perception of truth is keen. It has been said, ''Love 
is our highest word and the sjmonym of God. ' ' But 
if that be so, then the next highest word is justice. 
''For justice all place a temple and all season sum- 
mer!" What other excuse can government give for 
its existence than this — "to establish justice?" So 
it is that a good lawyer must have the qualities that 
go to the making of a good judge. He cannot con- 
duct his case msely nor advise his client safely 
unless he can foresee with reasonable accuracy how 
the court will be obliged to treat it w^hen it comes 
before it. The best counsel is he who best anticipates 
the court's decision. You cannot make a good judge 
out of intellect alone. He must have a heart that 
can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. 
His blood must be red. Let him be pure and 
righteous as he may, but through his heart must 
throb the quick, warm currents of humanity. And 
above all he must love justice. He must long to see 
the right prevail. So must the lawyer — ^^ilie lawyer," 
I mean. He must be great enough to exult in his own 
defeat when he finds that he ought to be defeated. 
Lawyers do not like to be beaten; judges do not like 

44 



to be reversed. But a judge who \\'ill not rejoice 
to see his own \\Tong judgment set aside — he 
may be great in learning and high in place, but the 
least in the kingdom of justice is greater than he. 
The law is a Spartan mistress, liard indeed and 
jealous enough, yet not ^vdthout a certain high and 
austere beauty of her own. It is not altogether a 
question of abilit}^ — the question of fitness for this 
or that profession: it is quite as much a question 
of temper, of disposition. When Othello is summoned 
from the bridal bed to undertake the Turkish wars, 
you remember he exclaims : 

"The tyrant custom, most grave senators, 
Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war 
My thrice-driven bed of down. 1 recognize 
A natural and prompt alacrity 
I find in hardness." 

He found in it something akin to his own nature 
and welcomed it so. There is a temper, admirable, 
too, in its way and the parent of admirable w^ork, 
which is not the temper of the law. Many a man has 
found it so when too late. ^lany another has found 
it so before it was too late and has left the law 
for his owTi proper calling. James Russell Lowell 
was one of these. He well represents a large class 
whose temper is literary, dreamy, poetic, rather than 
forensic. They had the native parts. Lowell himself 
had a lazy strength which, when he chose to put it 
forth, worked wonders. "The Vision of Sir Launfal" 
was \VTitten at a heat, at one sitting. But such 
phenomenal activity was followed by long periods 
of indolent repose in which the brooding genius 
nourished itself for another flight. We may doubt 

45 



if such minds are capable of that continuous and 
exacting discipline of which we are now speaking. 
It is not that the imagination serves no purpose in 
the lawyer's career. It may serve him mightily, but 
it must serve and not rule. It must be the horses, 
not the driver. It has been said that the artist is 
out of place in the law. I cannot subscribe to that. I 
believe all genuine work must be done in the spirit of 
the artist. The difference is not that one kind of work 
is art and the other mere drudgery; the difference is 
in the style of art and the main purpose of it. There 
is little learning, little culture, there are few graces 
and few accomplishments which may not serve the 
advocate at times and serve him well. But they are 
only aids to his main purpose. His main purpose is 
to make the most of his cause ; and any learning, any 
rhetoric, any eloquence, however admirable in itself, 
which does not help him to that end, is not art, because 
it violates the first canon of all art, w^hich requires 
unity and the subordination of every detail to the 
dominant idea. "When the advocate has made the 
most of his cause he has succeeded, as a workman, 
whether the cause be won or lost. In the same way, 
speaking broadly, the main purpose of the lawyer 
must be to make of himself the best lawyer it is 
possible for him to become. When he is taken pos- 
session of by the desire to do that he finds that to 
realize his ideal demands as much of him as it ever 
did of the Spartan. I do not say lie may not have 
a sort of success without it. If nature has given him 
a sturdy stomach and a normal brain, if fortune 
shall affbrd him an average chance among his fellows, 
he may have a shuffling sort of success and even win 

46 



a respectability of income and of place without tliis 
hardship; but if that be the goal of his ambition 
let him rest assured he will never be ranked by his 
fellow lawyers as a lawyer; he will never find hira- 
self leading in emergencies, never be waited for at 
the council-board nor dreaded in the battle of debate. 
In the first place, the realization of his ideal 
will call upon him for a body strong and sound and 
clean. I do not say he cannot succeed without it. 
I say he cannot make of himself the best lawyer pos- 
sible, without it. I do not forget how numerous have 
been the proofs that a strong will and a persistent 
purpose may overcome all physical defects, that men 
of feeble frame have wielded the power of giants. 
I do not forget how numerous have been those other 
proofs that genius may do wonders even when the 
body is trampled upon, abused, made drunken. I 
do not forget that the alternate excitement and ex- 
haustion of the la^vyer's life constitute peculiar 
temptations, and that many of the best have fallen, — 
that many of the ablest have dragged this lengthening 
chain along the path of their success. But the truth 
remains that he who would do his best must have a 
body strong and sound and clean. And whatever 
may have been the case in former days, the leaders 
of the bar todaj^ are mostly of this class. Intemper- 
ance was once almost the badge of our profession. 
It has come to be exceptional. The man who would 
lead realizes that he is like an athlete training for 
his finest effort. He knows that he has contests be- 
fore him that will task him to the uttermost. He 
knows that he will have rivals who have turned 
their backs on every such temptation, and that all 

47 



the difference between success and failure in the most 
important cause may turn some day on such advantage 
between him and his opponent. He knows that it 
is msdom to cast off every impediment, as that 
Lacedaemonian youth in the foot race at Olympia 
finally threw aside his girdle itself and ran naked to 
the goal. Indeed, I do not know the career in life 
where physical endurance counts for more than here. 
The great contests of the forum sometimes become 
physical almost as much as mental. Hour after hour 
may pass in strenuous exertion, in constant watch- 
fulness, in alert readiness, in slow, painful pursuit, 
and the fate of the case may hang on another hour 
of unflagging effort. Then endurance tells; then 
training tells; then the temperate life tells. The man 
who can go through such a day and then if need 
be go not to his bed but to his office and spend night 
there and come to court at morning armed cap-a-pe 
and fresh for the final struggle, has a superiority over 
his weaker adversary, who may be othermse his peer, 
which it would be difficult to overrate. 

Then, again, the realization of his ideal will 
demand of him a patience and minuteness of labor 
which few are willing to endure. He must learn to 
love drudgery, for nine-tenths of his employment will 
be what the world calls that. I used to think a lawyer 
was a man who spent his time making fine speeches 
in court. The years have taught me my mistake. I 
now see that a lawyer is a man who spends his days 
in drudgery nobody else is willing to submit to, that 
when the hour of doubt and difficulty comes he may 
have a sensible word to offer when no one else knows 
what to say. His admired effort is **the perfect 

48 



flower of Ms correction." It is hiving knowledge; 
it is acquiring skill ; it is training, disciplining, chast- 
ening every faculty into unwavering obedience. It 
is nothing peculiar to our profession. MacDonald 
defined the religious gift of grace as *'the lovely 
result of forgotten toil;" and that is true of all per- 
fection. It may be essential to our enjoyment of the 
finished product that we shut our eyes to the process, 
but not when we are inquiring how the masterpiece 
came to be. The most impressive picture of the 
oi'ator's power I can recall is that which Landor 
gave us in the imaginary conversation between Dem- 
osthenes and a contemporary. The prince of ad- 
vocates is talking of his past career, and as his memory 
goes back to the triumphant moments of his life, he 
exclaims : ' ' I have seen the day, Eubulides, when the 
most august of cities had but one voice within her 
walls; and when the stranger paused at the silence 
of her gateways and said, ' Demosthenes is speaking in 
the assembly of the people.' " But that is only half 
the lesson. The picture mil mislead us wholly un- 
less we set beside it that earlier one of the ill-shaped, 
thick-tongued, stammering youth, rehearsing with 
pebbles in his mouth, rehearsing while he raced against 
the wind, rehearsing in the thunders of the sea, in 
his dungeon underground, in his legal contests with 
his guardians, — developing and subduing every 
faculty of mind and body until it obeyed the slight- 
est dictate of his art. 

But, as I said, the law is not all speech making. 
Look at what the practitioner must have at his com- 
mand. There is the vast and venerable body of the 
common law of England, the basis of our law. There 

49 



lie the explanations of our present code ; there lie the 
fundamental principles which are to guide him, or 
give him his bearing, in almost every change; there 
is the source and fountain of our American con- 
ceptions of property and law. And here, too, "a 
little learning is a dangerous thing." There is the 
constitution of his state, by which every act of the 
legislature must be tested. This he must know as 
if by heart. There is the Federal constitution to 
which every state law must yield — to which every 
state constitution must, if necessary, bend. This 
must be familiar to him as his name. Then there are 
the acts of Congress, the statutes of his own state 
assembly, changing year by year, the decisions of 
courts of last resort deciding novel cases, an ever- 
increasing mass to analyse, to know as best he can, — 
the vital part of it. In the mere gathering of in- 
formation what limit is there but the limit of his 
strength? In the mere matter of selection — what to 
slight, Avhat to study carefully — see what discrimina- 
tion is required. Who wonders that we grow be- 
wildered? When a law student asked Gen. Butler 
what book he should read first, the bluff old pirate 
swept his arm toward his crowded shelves and cried: 
*'0h — , pitch in anywhere; you can't expect to know 
anything for a f cav years, anyhow ! ' ' When we watch 
the vast flood pouring past us we realize that discrim- 
ination is becoming all the time more necessary — 
all the time more difficult. Who will have the courage 
to contend against it? Here is where the philoso- 
phic temper tells. Here is opportunity for him who 
is not to be cowed by obstacles, nor bewildered by 
labyrinths, nor fooled by shams, nor imposed upon 

50 



by hollow reputations, — who can separate the grain 
from chaff, who can follow the thread of a legal prin- 
ciple through every devious winding to the light 
of day. 

How many-sided an active trial lawj^er must 
become in the course of years ! Hardly a department 
of business or a phase of social life that he does not 
touch. Wlio can wonder at the prominence the pro- 
fession holds in public life when he remembers that 
it touches life at more points than any other. Then, 
again, the faculties developed are tlie very ones which 
in the contests of life give men advantage over their 
fellows. To say nothing further of that breadth and 
fullness of knowledge which it gathers day by day, 
that perfect knowledge of human nature, the dis- 
cipline itself, — that mastery of all one's power, which 
it imparts, is enough to account for its pre-eminence. 

"What is more dramatic than an earnest trial? 
Here is human life contracted to the limits of a play, 
and yet not a play, but the reality itself. You know 
how vShakespeare in the historical plays crowds events 
that happened years apart into the limits of a week 
to give his drama unity, intensity, and dramatic 
power — how the Greek drama confines the action to 
a single day, and yet shows the unfolding fates of 
years within that day. So in the court room you 
have human life in miniature — a drama going on be- 
fore your eyes — no libretto in your hand to tell you 
how it is coming out — every step a surprise — its cli- 
maxes all real — the issues of life and death often to 
be found in a moment, sometimes in a single word. 

The court room is a battlefield and calls for 
no Flodden Field or Gettysburg calls for 

51 



more. In th'fe exigencies of a trial the coward 
goes to the rear — no matter how learned a coward 
he may be. To learn to think upon his feet, to delib- 
erate and decide in the very heat of strife, to meet 
apparent ruin with a smile, never to lose his poise, 
to be the perfect master of himself in every crisis of 
his case, — all this his art demands. No jury will try 
to carry through a case they see the lawyer has lost 
heart in. 

His ideal grows stricter, more severe, as years go 
by until no superfluity is tolerable. So in all art. 
In youth, Venus and Adonis — in age, Hamlet. So all 
art grows severe as it grows perfect — even with 
painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, but especi- 
ally with orators, and most of all with the master of 
that severest type of oratory, the advocate in court. 
No ornament now for the sake of ornament, no weapon 
to be despised however rude that will bring victory. 
"If you knew how precious freedom is, you would 
defend it with axes,'^ said the Spartans to the Great 
King 's satrap when he ridiculed their arms. What op- 
portunity for genuine eloquence ! — the clean-cut state- 
ment, the shrewd analysis, cunning to track the lie back 
to its lair, courage to transfix it when it is found, 
illustration like a burst of sunlight in a darkened 
room, the witty story, the touch of pathos, the passion- 
ate appeal! 

To me the peculiar glory of the lawyer 's career is 
that its power increases with increasing years. The 
great lawyer is greatest at the last. His highest ability 
begins when men in other walks of life have passed 
their usefulness. Three score and ten is young for the 
ideal lawyer. Now comes the cumulative force of all 

52 



his years of knowledge, training, and resource. There 
was Sidney Bartlett, leader of Suffolk County Bar at 
ninety years. Holmes called him ''the lion of the law," 
and wrote : 

"How Court Street trembles when lie leaves his den 
Clad in the pomp of four score years and ten!" 

There was Henry W. Paine, once leader of the 
same great bar, who left his practice at eighty-four. 
He was an old man when he used to stand in court 
and lay down the law with his simple ipse dixit, rarely 
citing book, and rarely asked to cite it. There was one 
exception, however, and it called forth from him the 
finest of court repartees. He was arguing before 
Judge Gray, afterwards of the Federal Supreme 
Court, who, always more of a lawyer than a courtier, 
broke in upon him with, ''Mr. Paine, that is not the 
law." "It was the law," replied the perfect courtier, 
"until Your Honor just spoke." When you entered the 
Supreme Court chamber a few years ago, you saw 
upon the bench a figure worthy to remind you of 
Tennyson's description of Homer: 

And there the Ionian father of the rest, 
A million wrinkles carved his skin; 

A hundred winters snowed upon his breast, 
From cheek and throat and chin, 

— Stephen J. Field, fit representative of his long- 
lived, manly race. This is, indeed, in Browning's fine 
phrase: "The last of life for which the first was 
made." To every young man who has any aspiration 
at all life comes in the same guises which it put on 
before the Trojan shepherd. The three goddesses 
appear. The love of pleasure, sensuous, beautiful — 

53 



so Aphrodite came. It also comes in guise of greater 
dignity, more alluring, too, to minds of manly 
temper, and speaks to him of wealth and influence. 
So Here came to Paris. 

"Still she spake on, and still she spake of power, 
Which in all action is the end of all." 

One other form she comes in, nobler still. Wisdom 
herself, Athene; 

"Self -reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power." 

But there is a graver consideration. There is a 
larger sense in wMch life itself is only another name 
for opportunity. I should have wasted the hour you 
lend me tonight if I should close without bringing my 
subject to the test of this thought also. We all recognize 
the sordidness of the view that looks upon any occu- 
pation solely as bread winning, or as a way to get 
rich. But the thoughtful man might ask: "After all 
your fine talk of information, discipline, education 
even in its broadest sense, — cui bono? Is this all? Is 
this, then, the chief end of man, to be educated? If 
so, the universe is made to revolve about my indi- 
vidual soul for a center — a philosophy as unworthy 
of my belief as that old petty theory of the heavens, 
which made the earth the center of all things in^jfead 
of recognizing it as the infinitesimal speck it is, follow- 
ing in the wake of titanic suns and systems. I can- 
not accept that philosophy." Well, neither can I. I 
agree : It is beneficent acti\dty which is the chief end 
of man, — that, mth the eternal happiness which 
keeps it company. We can never be at peace with 
ourselves, never possess that happiness which, as 

54 



Matthew Arnold put it, comes from the conscious- 
ness of hitting the mark, if we fail to fulfill the prime 
purpose of existence, which is to live in and for tlie 
life of humanity — not the struggling, sordid humanity 
of today alone, but the triumphant, glorified human- 
ity which is to be, on earth. 

What is a lawyer's part in life thus looked upon? 
A very small part some people would say. There is 
a notion that a lawyer's very business is inconsist- 
ent with any such view. I used to hear a minister 
laugh about a pious member of his flock who was 
accustomed to make earnest prayer for a friend of 
his, a lawyer, that he might become a Christian, 
always adding with a dubious sigh, "Oh, Lord, if it 
be possible for a lawyer to be a Christian!" If 
Tolstoi is right the lawyer's life does run counter to 
Christian ethics at every step. So does the judge's, 
the soldier's, the policeman's, the law-maker's, every 
man's who helps to hold up existing governmental 
order. I bow to the sincerity and consistency of 
those w^ho thus read and ohey the Sermon on the 
Mount, but I take it we do not so interpret it; and 
if the social order is to be maintained, as necessary 
in some sort and the best we could get so far, if the 
practical work before lies in slowly remolding it to 
better ideals and uses, then the lawyer's opportunity 
is indeed unrivaled. I know the tendency is for him 
to grow conservative, — distrusting, fearing change. 
I blush to own that law reforms have not alw^ays nor 
often had their birth in lawyers' brains. They have 
come, like almost all reforms, from below, in the 
upheaval of crushed and outraged masses. 

Then, again, see how wealth almost monopolizes 

55 



legal talent. A moment's reflection will suffice for 
you to name a score of lawyers of commanding powers 
in the pay of enormous corporations^ — one moment. 
Now take five and count over for me half as many 
of equal force and fame who represent the people 
in their life-long struggle with these vast and over- 
shadowing interests. Let a young man at the bar 
display great ability , — instantly he is clapped under 
a retainer. When Chatham made his first speech in 
the House of Commons, Walpole exclaimed: "We 
must muzzle that terrible Cornet of Horse," and sent 
a henchman to bribe him. Happily for England and 
America, too, Walpole had no bribe large enough 
to make a gag for those terrible lips. Unfortunately, 
the Chathams have not always been so hard to muzzle. 
Nor is it strange. The retainer is not a bribe. It is 
jan honest fee. I do not impugn the motives of those 
who take it when it comes. It is a flattering, insidi- 
ous prize. I know wealth must have brains to serve it, 
and is entitled to such service. I am not arraigning 
wealth. My lamentation is that there should not be more 
to hear the call to the other side, to stand as champions 
of the people unfettered by any such alliance. The 
questions we must meet hereafter relate to wealth 
and especially to the framing of laws which may 
regulate the distribution of it. Should all our lawyers 
be retained by wealth? How can we lessen the 
inequalities of life and not impair the principles of 
property and law? That is the problem that con- 
fronts us. How can wealth be forced to pay its share 
of taxes? How shall we give the poor man's child 
an even chance in life ? How get for him who toils a 
few free hours of sunlight with his family, an hour 

56 



or two each day to cultivate his mind? How see to 
it that these ponderous, soulless machines, to which 
indeed we owe so much, do not become in the end 
very Juggernauts, crushing manhood, womanhood, 
and childhood to the earth? How shall we counter- 
act with wholesome, hopeful laws the blind despair- 
ing efforts of the giant whose hundred hands may soon 
find swords to fight with ? These are the questions that 
face us. How shall we ever answer them Avith safety if 
every man, as soon as he has mastered law enough to 
be of any use, forsakes the poor and strikes hands 
with the rich? 

Thomas Erskine went into Lord Mansfield's 
court one morning penniless, as the obscure associate 
of eminent counsel, who thought their case beyond 
hope, not worth a struggle. He rose unexpectedly, 
and in the face of his Lordship's reproof dragged 
the real author of the iniquity into court and by 
sheer force of his audacious eloquence transfixed him 
there. His case was won, and he went out an hour 
later, his place and fame secure, receiving retainer 
after retainer as he made his way out of the hall — 
the most sudden and dramatic instance of forensic 
success on record. Years afterwards when some one 
asked him how he dared to face Lord Mansfield with 
such boldness on a point where he was clearly out of 
order, he replied : ' ' I seemed to feel my children tug- 
ging at my robe, and saying, 'Now, father, is the time 
to get us bread.' " I know how very strong such 
tugging is, but I have sometimes thought that advo- 
cates might feel the hands of innumerable children 
tugging at their robes if they had hearts to heed 
them. ' 

57 



If I seem to make too high and severe a test 
for our profession — ^if you say this is not the common 
view — ^you will at least admit that if the lawyer does 
not lift the burden from his fellow men, it is not for 
lack of many a golden opportunity. It may be in 
the future as in the past that the helpers of mankind 
must come from other walks of life, — that the burden 
of reform shall be laid on the shoulders that are wil- 
ling, rather than on the shoulders that are able, to 
bear; but one thing is sure: There never was a time 
when the lawyer might wield such power as in the 
fifty years before us. For in those years, as all men see, 
the foundations of the state are to be searched as with 
candles. Every principle of polity is to be challenged 
and overhauled, and the ceaseless question will be 
asked, What ails the social order? "Why in a world 
of plenty, in a land the garden of the world, under 
a government of the people, by the people, for the 
people, is it possible that one man should spoil in 
luxury while another may starve beside him for the 
lack of work ? If the men whose daily life has taught 
them to expound and apply the rules of reason, of 
government, and law, — if they will keep their Leads 
clear and their hearts warm to deserve and win the 
confidence of their fellows, what helpful part may 
they not take in solving these dark problems? Only 
let not all hold the retainer of capital. Let a few 
stand for the numberless clientage of the poor. 

You will say I have idealized the profession. I 
confess it. I could not labor in it unless I did. What- 
ever one's profession may be, let him idealize it. If I 
had but one word of counsel to give it would be that. 
Clothe it with the richest imagery; surround it with 

58 



the noblest names, the proudest associations. 16 you 
were an artist you would think of Phidias, and 
Raphael, and Michael Angelo. If you were a preacher 
you would think of Savonarola, and Whitefield, and 
Bossuet, and Brooks. If you are a lawyer think of 
Marshall, and AVebster, of Erskine, and Coke, of 
Selden, Ulpian, Demosthenes. These, not the huck- 
sters and shysters of the day, stand for your art. Lift 
it to the level of your highest thought ; dignify it by 
your noblest effort; then if you fail to fulfill your 
ideal your very failure might be success for one who 
strove less nobly. 

"Build as thou wilt and as thy light is given; 
Then if at last the airy structure fall, 
Dissolve and vanish, take thyself no shame; 
They fail, and they alone, who have not striven." 

The lawyer leaves a short-lived fame. His eases, 
which taxed his strength and drained his very blood, 
are mostly of passing interest and soon forgotten. 
There was Dexter, of whom Webster said : ' ' His very 
statement was argument, his inference seemed demon- 
stration." He hardly lives now beyond that single 
sentence of Webster's eulogium.. There was Jere- 
miah Mason, the giant of Webster's day, to whose 
rivalry Webster himself attributed his development, 
a rivalry that held the god-like Daniel to his utmost 
effort, and made him often say : * ' The laurels of Milt- 
iades will not let me sleep." It was Mason, you may 
remember, who argued the Dartmouth College case 
in the State Court of New Hampshire, and so argued 
it that when Webster presented it again in the United 
States Supreme Court in that world-famous speech, 

59 



he could only plough through again, and did, the 
same furrow that Ma&on's share had run in. This was 
the man whom old lawyers still speak of as the great- 
est New England ever had. I doubt if many of you 
ever heard of him before. And yet he did a man's 
work and fills a man's place in the world's forgotten 
history. Choate himself has left little more than an 
actor's tradition. The race of fame is not always to 
the swift nor its battle to the strong. How pathetic 
the thought of that innumerable nameless multitude 
who have done the world's rough work! Other men 
labored and we have entered into their labors. We 
cannot even thank them for it. That may be our 
lot, and doubtless will. It is only a question of time 
at best when we shall be forgotten. You go out per- 
haps under a starry night. Above you ride the 
heavenly host. You see the bright majestic stars, the 
splendid constellations. Perhaps you know their 
names — Jupiter, Saturn, Orion, the Pleiades. You 
think they shed the light upon your path, and so they 
do, but not the whole. Astronomers will tell you that 
one-fourth of all that blended radiance falls from 
stars too small for you to see. They seem to have 
no place in heaven. They have no name on earth. And 
yet they help to light you on your way. Not one of 
us may ever become a bright, particular star in the 
heaven of fame. But we may all join the invisible 
host that shed their kindly light upon the paths of 
men. 



60 



ISRAEL'S IDEAL OF JUSTICE 

A Response to that Toast, at a Banquet of the B'naiB'rith 
in Washington, D. C, April 6 J 910. 

I wish to say a few words tonight about the 
contribution Israel has made to the world's ideal of 
justice. Justice is undoubtedly the dearest interest 
that men possess. There is only one tiling more 
important than to get justice, and that is to do justice. 
The race that has done most to elevate and widen 
the world's sense of justice has rendered it the 
greatest ser^dce And let me say at once that the 
reading and reflection of a lifetime have led me to 
believe that that supreme distinction must be accorded 
to the Jew. 

What is justice? Certainly it is not that thing 
which in a childish and partial view some men mistake 
for justice, — the deserved punishment of guilt, or 
the reward of merit. Rather let us say it is that 
harmonious adjustment of all relations that comes 
of a keen and controlling sense of what is right. 
Justice is a universal concept. It is not in conflict 
with mercy. Mercy is only another name for justice. 
It is only another expression of the same infinite and 
divine face. If we ever think of mercy and justice 
as warring with each other it is only because our view 
is too narrow and contracted. Take it in a court of 
justice. It is never a question whether mercj^ shall 
be shown. Mercy ought always to be shown. The 

61 



question is how shall it be shown, and to whom 
shall it be shown, to the one or to the many, to the 
guilty or to the innocent, to the murderer or to him 
who may be his next victim if he shall go free, to the 
individual sufferer or to that great number who may 
be restrained by his example? And even to the 
offender some measure of punishment may be the 
truest mercy. 

Now it is the glory of the Jew that he clearly 
perceived this universal quality of justice. That 
unrivalled gift of spiritual insight that enabled him 
to stand in the crowded pantheon of pagan gods, 
unbewildered by their subtlety, unenamored of their 
beauty, and proclaim the everlasting truth that God 
is one, — ^that same gift enabled him to see that God's 
character is one and perfectly consistent. He bowed 
down and said, ''Our God is a consuming fire,' and 
then lifted up his face in childlike confidence and 
said, ' ' His mercy endureth forever. ' ' He saw that the 
two truths were not really two but one. He thought 
of God as a king who wraps creation round him like 
a garment, and yet he felt him to be a father who 
leans down to catch the lowest whisper of his child. 
And his idea of God was one and the same with his 
idea of justice. Other peoples have pictured justice as 
an angel standing beside the throne, waiting with the 
glittering, unsheathed sword of vengeance, or holding 
before her blindfolded eyes the poised and pendent 
balance. The Hebrew went beyond all that. With 
the boldness of the seer he cried, ''Justice and judg- 
ment are the habitation of Thy throne," as much as 
to say, God 's very throne is built upon his justice, and 
if God himself could fall away from justice he would 



in that same moment fall away from power. When 
has thought soared to a more daring height, or clothed 
itself in language more magnificent? Compare that 
sublime conception of the Jew with the vacillating 
deities of Olympus, — creations of the most brilliant 
intellect the world has ever known. 

And then he saw that justice was eternal. All 
things about him were in flux. Races might come and 
go, empires might rise and fall, but what was right 
yesterday was right today and would be right tomor- 
row. There he took his stand. The earth might shake 
and tremble, the mountains might skip like young 
rams, but justice would never fail him, and under- 
neath him were the everlasting arms. God gave him 
to see, through the things that are ever changing, 
the things that never change. 

And one thing more he saw, — saw it with a clear- 
ness of vision never granted to any other, and held to 
it with a courage as stubborn as ever stood against the 
tide of battle — he saw that no matter what the op- 
position, no matter what the persecution, no matter 
what the apparent power of the oppressor, 
justice was sure to triumph in the end. That 
is the vision and the faith that have made 
his record glorious. Those are the ^vings of 
song. That is the burning coal of prophecy. The 
reign of the Messiah, what is it after all but the final 
the permanent establishment of justice? That is the 
glorious future that is dramng to itself the hearts of 
men ; and towards it all eyes are turning. Thousands 
of years ago the Hebrew saw it and proclaimed its 
coming. When all the world around lay buried in 
sleep and darkness he stood upon the mountain sum- 

63 



mit and caught the earliest ray of the ascending dawn. 
In prayer and psalm and prophecy, in the matchless 
splendor of oriental speech, he delivered liis message 
and taught the world his truth — ^justice universal, 
eternal, triumphant. 

No people was ever oppressed like tliis people. 
No people was ever so persecuted, so trodden upon, so 
prostrate; yet non^ has triumphed so magnificently. 
Israel's ideal of Justice has taken permanent posses- 
sion of the human mind. Torn asunder by faction, 
driven from his country, scattered to the four winds 
of heaven, scourged up and down the highways of 
the world, stretched upon the rack, burned at the 
stake, massacred by the hundred-thousand, a wanderer 
friendless and homeless through the centuries, de- 
spised by the world he was liberating from its idols, 
Israel has stamped his ideal of justice upon the human 
consciousness itself, and lives in every upward move- 
ment of the race. I do not forget — though for the 
moment I may seem to do so — I do not forget what 
other races have contributed to the common store, — 
Athens and Italy their sense of beauty, Sparta and 
Rome their love of discipline and order, Gaul and 
Germany their zeal for liberty, England and America 
the ever-blessed union of liberty under law ; I do not 
forget what your own gifted race has wrought in other 
ways — in war and state-craft, in music, art, poetry, 
science, history, philosophy — but, compared with the 
meaning and majesty of this achievement, every other 
work you have accomplished, every triumph of every 
other people sinks into insignificance. Give up every 
other claim to the world's gratitude before you sur- 
render this : The world owes its conception of justice 
to the Jew. 

64 



AT GRANTS TOMB: A DECORATION 
DAY ADDRESS 

Passages from an Address delivered at Grant's Tomb, River- 
side Drive, New York, on the invitation of U. S. Grant 
Post, No. 327, Department of N Y. G. A. R„ 
May 30, 1906. 

The bitterest of Southern statesmen informed tiie 
House of Representatives that his section looked upon 
the Federal bond only as a matter of convenience. 
^ * There is no magic in this word Union ! ' ' he declared. 
That was in 1824, and for over a generation Ran- 
dolph's fellow skeptics took the sneer for truth. The 
first cannon-shot against Fort Sumter taught them 
their mistake. There was magic in the word Union, 
and under the spell of it they saw the whole North 
bristle with bayonets and billow with banners, while a 
million men made ready to march down to the Gulf. It 
was a war between the old and the new — the past and 
the present — a war of civilizations and a war of 
worlds. And so it was, that a conquest of arms would 
have been a fruitless victory without the conquest of 
ideas. But freedom has triumphed: slavery is gone 
and not a voice is raised to call it back. Nationality 
has triumphed: today this flag is kissed by all the 
breezes of the South. 

Those were the two great trophies of the war — 
freedom and nationality. That was the splendid spoil 
our heroes brought back from the crimson fields to 

65 



hang forever in the dome of fame and shine untar- 
nished by the envious years. The dead are mightily 
avenged in the adoption of their principles. Do you 
not hear them calling from their graves under the 
cypress and the drooping vines? ''Let all unkind- 
ness be forgotten now. This reunited country is our 
monument. The triumph of our cause is all the cro^vn 
we need. Give up all things for peace — all things but 
one — all things except the beautiful and everlasting 
truth for which we died ! ' * 

There was no personal rancor between the brave 
men who fought the question out. The issues were 
too vast and terrible for that. Wlio uttered those 
large words of golden charity, "Let us have peace?" 
Was it not the most dread and dogged fighter of all? 
It was the same man who said: ''I will provide no 
transports for the retreat of my forces across this 
river. If I wdn I shall not need them, and if 1 am 
beaten a log will be enough to take my army back." 
No wonder the Confederacy trembled when it learned 
that the North had finally gathered up all the reins of 
battle and placed them in those unrelenting hands. 
That was the same man, gentle as a knight of old, who 
handed back Lee's beautiful sword when he surrender- 
ed it, and told the Southern soldier-boys to keep their 
horses because they would need them for the Spring 
plowing. 

And yet when the war began what was he ? A man 
who had made a failure of life and was cutting and 
hauling firewood for the kitchens of St. Louis. When 
democracy was in danger she stooped among her 
failures, and out of that material molded the greatest 
general of the age. It was as if she had said: *'I will 

66 



teach the world for all time that free government can 
produce its own defenders out of the undreamed great- 
ness of common manhood!" Europe said: ''Your 
real trouble will come when the war is over and you 
undertake to disband these enormous armies." Dem- 
ocracy said : * ' I will show you. ' ' She uttered the one 
word peace, and her armies melted away as the snow 
does in the Spring. These men were great and did 
great things because they trusted in great principles. 
Men have always been greatest when their need was 
greatest. They have done most when they have be- 
lieved most. Doubt begets failure — belief is the father 
of deeds. 

These are the days — these are tlie object-lessons 
that quicken patriotic life and make the future safe. 
From some altar which the service of this day has 
kindled the angel of patriotism ma}^ snatch the live 
ember that can still touch cold, impassive lips with 
the old deathless fire. Perhaps this very day some 
leader of the time to come may hear his call. This 
very day the armies of the future may be mustered 
in. For in how many places all over this wide land 
these sad, proud ceremonies are now going on! We 
see them one and all. We see them in the shadow of 
heroic tombs like this where we are gathered. We see 
them in solemn sleeping-places on the banks of lordly 
rivers where many thousands rest upon their arms. 
We see them on old cruel battlefields where the young 
summer laughs aloud, and vine and verdure make the 
record of the strife appear as false and idle as a half- 
remembered dream. We see them in villages and 
towns alive with banners, and in thronged thorough- 
fares of mighty cities where hurrying men of alien 

67 



race and unfamiliar speech stare at the passing 
column as if they gazed upon a pageant of the past. 
We see them in the most pathetic parts of all, — ^in 
little humble burial-places scattered along the prairies 
or hidden away among the lonely hills. We watch 
them one by one. We see the proud procession going 
forth, — men in the noon of life, young men with quick 
and eager pulse, their brows still bright with the 
sweet dews of dawn, and children from their full 
hands dropping flowers — and at the heart of each we 
see a dwindled company of white-haired men whose 
ardent youth was touched to greatness by their time's 
great call. Who dreams that he can weigh wdth 
words the value of observances like these ? God pity 
us if we believe that all the bills and bonds in the 
banks of this imperial city constitute an asset half as 
dear ! 

When this day began to be observed it was only 
a day set apart for decorating the graves of those who 
perished in the Civil War. Year by year it has grown 
in meaning and in scope until it has come to be the 
All Souls Day of the nation. It now aims to guard 
and keep alive the memory of all who at any time 
or in any place have laid down their lives for the 
great republic. To all who by their death have magni- 
fied her, to all her servants departed this life in her 
faith and fear, the time is consecrated. To one and 
all. There is none so long dead as to be forgotten. 
There is none so far away as to be out of mind. There 
is none so humble as to be overlooked. There is none 
so mighty or renowned as not to receive an added 
dignity and grace from the spirit of the hour. From 
1775 to 1906, — from the sunny lawn at Lexington 



to the dank jungle of the South Pacific, — there is not 
one who parted with sweet life in the belief that he 
was serving her but has his part in her memory and 
gratitude today. Today she tenderly recalls not only 
all who wore her colors in camp and field, but all who 
for her welfare gave up health or friends or quiet 
hours, — all who in selfish times were ready to forego 
the rewards of office, even the good will of their 
fellow-men, not because they loved these less but 
because they loved her more, — willing to endure 
shame and persecution if only they might make her 
law worthy of obedience and her raiment white as 
snow. Time, that touches all things with mellowing 
hands, has softened the recollections of old contests, 
and while bearing to oblivion much that was held 
dear lends grandeur and luster to all that still 
remains. It is not her land nor her arms nor her gold 
that constitutes the true wealth of the nation : it is her 
sacred and heroic memories. And this is the day when 
she is making up her jewels. Well may she remember 
this returning day to keep it holy. No greed, no am- 
bition, can poison the life of a people if in every 
year it will keep sacred one such day. 



69 



ONE OF THE FOURTH ESTATE : CROSBY 
STUART NOYES 

A Eulogy at a Memorial Meeting in the New National 
Theatre, Washington, D. C, Sunday, April 5, 1908. 

Mr. President, as you are well aware, it is quite 
against my personal inclination that I am taking more 
than a silent part in these observances. Not that I am 
not always glad to pay my tribute to a public bene- 
factor, but that I feel incompetent, from lack of per- 
sonal acquaintance, to speak of him as he deserves. 
Yet I could not well refuse, because I hold that an 
invitation of this character, and coming from the 
source it does, should be to any true citizen equivalent 
to a command. Fortunately there are many here who 
knew him well, and what I have to say has been 
verified already. 

What a character it is that has been drawn 
for us in the last few weeks by those who knew him 
from young manhood to old age! To begin with, a 
farmer's boy, too frail to follow the plow, but with 
a rich gift of expression — a love of letters joined to 
a keen zest for life; a bright sense of humor playing 
over austere principles, as sunlight plays over the 
mountain crags. Then, in the full strength of 
years, courage without headiness, independence with- 
out rancor. Critical of imperfection, yet always 
quicker to see good than evil. No petty spite, no 
personal animosity — always reserving the divine 

70 



faculty of hate for giant wrongs and oppressions, 
the only objects worthy of its terrible aim. Modest, 
unassuming, ready to lend an ear to any complaint 
however humble, to champion any honest cause how- 
ever feeble. Bold yet conservative, shrewd and 
capable in business, broadminded and far-sighted in 
civic affairs, staunch in time of trial, steady against 
assault; never stepping needlessly into the gaze of 
men, yet influencing their thought and conduct in 
a thousand unobtrusive ways; a quiet moldcr of 
opinion; a doer of deeds and yet a dreamer of 
dreams; with a faith and pride in Washington that 
amounted to a passion; full of plans to reclaim her 
waste places and preserve her scenes of natural 
beauty for the generations that are to come. A philan- 
thropy that knew no color, claSvS or creed, and a 
personal charm that opened hostile doors like the 
touch of magic and turned enemies into friends! 
Such is the picture, so fine and nobly rounded that 
if it were not vouched for by those whose word is 
above question and who know whereof they speak, 
we might hesitate to accept it as the truth. 

Yet we do accept it ; and I, as a son of that 
New England that sent him forth, point to him with 
special pride as a shining example of what her sturdy 
stock has done for American ideals in every quarter 
of the land. 

What a complete and wholly satisfying life 
it was! Not without its obstacles and adversities, bat 
developing the quiet strength that could surmount 
them all. Walking from Philadelphia to Washington, 
except for an offered ride, which he laughingly said 
turned out to be harder than walking; beginning 

71 



with less than two dollars in a strange city ; throwing- 
himself at once into the life and interests of the place ; 
following with eager eyes of youth the portentous 
events that led up to and brought on the war ; study- 
ing and describing the statesmen and leaders of the 
period; listening to "Webster, to Calhoun, to Clay; 
watching and participating in the struggles and 
passions, the defeats and victories of that great con- 
flict out of which our true national consciousness 
was to have its birth; knowing the friendship of 
Lincoln; recei^dng the confidence of Stanton; and, 
when peace was restored, taking his seat in that 
editorial chair which he made a sort of throne ; main- 
taining there during forty years the best traditions 
of that older journalism which had Bryant and 
Bowles and Greeley for its exemplars; storing his 
mind with study ; correcting his opinions by the safer 
schooling of affairs; traveling in many lands and 
bringing back the treasures of remote ages and 
strange peoples to beautify his home; giving himself 
unstintedly for the good of his time and the eleva- 
tion of the city of his care, and finding himself year 
by year more secure in the love and veneration of his 
fellows — surely that was a life worth living, and the 
memory of it is a priceless heritage to leave his sons. 
To me, sir, there is something peculiarly impres- 
sive and inspiring in a scene like this — a city calling 
her sons and daughters together to review the life 
and recount the services of one of the truest and 
noblest of her citizens, to weigh the pure gold of his 
character, and leave the garland of gratitude upon 
his grave. It is, indeed, good for us to be here. 
He may not know what we are saying of him here 

72 



today; yet in that long, laborious life may he not 
sometimes have been cheered and strengthened by 
the foreknowledge that this hour would come? He 
must have known that he had deserved well of 
Washington and that Washington would set the seal 
of her approval on his work w^ien it was done. He 
was, in the truest and best sense of the expression, a 
public man. He had lived in the general eye, and 
when he saw his end approaching he recognized and 
provided for the right he knew his fellow citizens 
would claim, to have a part in his funeral. That 
tribute of their love and reverence was duly paid; 
and now, not in the fresh pain of grief or the first 
sense of loss, but in the calm and quiet hour of 
grateful recollection, the city summons us to say 
for him the final, fitting word. Foi* sixty years he 
held her welfare and her honor dear. In her day 
of small things he was faithful and in the day of 
her greatness he was proud. In the night of gloom 
he did not forsake her, and in the morning of 
splendor he was with her and rejoiced. All his 
care and labor was to make her paths prosperous and 
peaceful, her homes pure, her people happy, her 
apparel glorious and her habitation beautiful to be- 
hold. We believe that all he lived to see was only 
the beginning, the faint far-off beginning, of her com- 
ing day's magnificence. He is gone, but he will not 
be forgotten. As time goes on, other sons no less 
gifted and devoted will be born of her womb or be 
beckoned to her side; but whatever other names she 
may inscribe in after years upon her broad escutcheon, 
she will never erase the name of Crosby Stuart Noyes. 



73 



THE NEW DESPOTISM 

A Speech at the Dinner to the Federal Judges under the 
Auspices of the New York County Lawyers* Asso- 
ciation, February 17, 1912. 

My native State, in its Bill of Rights, declares 
that the safety of free government will be found 
in "a frequent recurrence to fundamental princi- 
ples." In the few moments allotted me tonight I 
wish to examine the judicial recall in the light of 
those principles. 

We have built our institutions on the proposi- 
tion that the people have the right to rule. Their 
will is made known through the suffrage. And 
when opinions differ, as they usually do, the major- 
ity must govern. But that is not the whole of the 
proposition. If it were, there would be no safeguard 
whatever for the rights of the minority. The 
majority might appropriate their property. It 
might reduce them to slavery. It might even take 
away their lives. The proposition takes for granted, 
then, certain guaranties for the protection of the 
minority. And what are these? They are those 
elementary rights which no majority, however large, 
may ever violate. They have been recognized in 
constitutions and bills of rights, but they were not 
created by them. They inhere in free government 
itself, for human freedom is impossible without them. 
Among these rights there is none miore important 

74 



than this: That no citizen shall be deprived of his 
liberty or property except by the judgment oi the 
law and after a trial before an independent and im- 
partial tribunal. We have now come to the keystone 
of the arch. It is this: The majority of the legal 
voters cannot constitute itself this tribunal. If it 
can, it still holds the property and lives of the minor- 
ity in its hands, subject to its mere will and pleasure, 
for there is no one who can call it to account. 

The cases that may come before the tribunal 
are of two classes. First, those between individuals 
merely; second, those in which one of the parties 
is in fact, if not in name, the people themselves, or 
the popular majority. By far the most important 
and most trying cases will be those of the second 
class, in which it is contended that some fundamental 
right of the individual or the minority is being 
violated. The violation will be attempted under the 
form of law, and thus the real party upon ono side 
is the people or the popular majority, whose will 
has here found expression in the form of law. In such 
cases how is the independence and impartiality of 
the tribunal to be secured? How except by re- 
mo^dng it as far as possible from dictation by either 
party? Let it be remembered that the tribunal, the 
court, has been created and its members chosen by 
one of the parties to the controversy, namely, the 
people. Clearly, then, the only security the other 
party can have is this: That the tribunal, once it is 
created and its members chosen, shall be permitted 
to decide without further interference. If it is to 
be checked and overawed by one of the parties, if, 
the moment it decides the case against that party, 

75 



its power is to be taken from it and bestowed upon 
others, then it is the party that decides the case, 
not the tribunal. 

Let us inquire whether this reasoning fits the 
facts of the present time. Take but one example. 
A popular majority, through the Legislature elected 
by it, or more directly by the initiative and referen- 
dum, enacts a statute requiring railroads to carry 
passengers for one cent a mile. A test case comes 
before the court. The railroad insists that the act 
robs it of its property and the court so holds. There- 
upon the same popular majority votes the judges 
out of office and elects to fill their places judges 
who will reverse the decision. Has not the popular 
majority constituted itself the court? May a man 
be the judge in his own case? 

Let us test the measure by another fundamental 
principle. A despot makes the law and also decides 
whether the particular case comes within the law. 
Or he may just as well dispense mth the law, since 
no one can question his decision that the case conies 
within it. On the other hand, in a free government 
one body makes the law, the general rule, while 
another body decides whether the particular case 
falls within the rule. Thus the citizen is protected. 
We call it keeping the legislative and judicial de- 
partments separate. In a despotism they are united. 
In a free government they are separate. Now if 
the popular majority not only makes the law, but 
also decides whether a given case falls witliin it, 
then the legislative and judicial powers are united 
in the same body and the government ceases to be 
free and becomes a despotism. 

76 



If it be objected that the argument proves too 
much, since by this reasoning the rule should be 
once a judge always a judge, my answer is two- 
fold. First, I hold with Hamilton that the judicial 
tenure ought to be nothing less than during good 
behavior. Second, if the judges are to be elected 
for limited terms, those terms should be at least of 
such a length that the judge's re-election should 
not depend upon his decision of some particular 
case or question, but upon his general worthiness 
to be a judge. 

The argument for the recall assumes that judges 
are only agents of the majority, and easily reaches 
the conclusion that when the agent fails to satisfy 
his principal he may rightly be recalled. The 
fallacy in the argument is in the assumption that 
the judge is an agent. He is not an agent in any 
proper sense of that word. He is not the agent 
of either party to a cause. He is not even the 
agent of both parties. If his duty were to trade 
and compromise between them he might be considered 
the agent of both. But that is not his duty. His 
duty is to decide. It is not for him to please, nor 
to seek to please, either party. It is for him to 
decide the question between them as law and justice 
requires. 

But some one will say: ''The Constitution with 
its guaranties was adopted by the popular majority. 
Can you not trust it to abide by the work of its 
own hands?" Sir, I believe in the people, but I 
should not wish to see even the Bill of Rights sub- 
jected to the chances of every popular election. The 
making of a constitution is a work of momentous 

77 



import. Statutes stand for what the people think 
from year to year. Constitutions stand for what they 
think from generation to generation. When a 
change in the organic law is proposed; when society 
has been stirred to its depths by the interest excited; 
when the strongest intellects of the time have spent 
their powers upon the question; when it has been 
debated in all its bearings ; and when the people con- 
scious of the tremendous issues involved have solemn- 
ly weighed and decided for themselves and their post- 
erity, I am willing to leave the question in their hands. 
But what resemblance has that to the proceedings we 
are discussing now? Another thing. "When a con- 
stitution is to be adopted or amended the question sub- 
mitted is in its nature general. It is a law. But 
when a controversy arises before a court it is con- 
crete, and the question is apt to be whether the case 
falls within the law. Perhaps no one would be ready 
to propose that the Constitution should be changed, 
and yet a multitude may wish to have it decided 
that the party is not entitled to the protection of 
the Constitution in the case at bar. Now that is a 
question which a popular assembly is not adapted 
to try, nor qualified to decide. It is necessarily 
a question for a court. 

If judicial opinions are to be reviewed at popu- 
lar elections, why should not judges be instructed 
beforehand how to decide questions that are certain 
to arise? They would be saved the possibility of 
making a mistake. If that is not to be done the 
greatest jurist will be the one who shows himself 
most expert and nimble in keeping on the side of 
the majority. 

78 



When the king asked Lord Coke how he would 
decide a certain question if it came before him he 
replied: "When that case arises I will decide it as 
shall befit a judge." History has recorded the 
answer with a proud smile. When democracy asks 
that question of her judges shall they answer with 
less dignity and self-respect than the chief justice 
of the Stuarts? When Prince Hal struck the lord 
chief justice on the bench and went to jail for it, 
the king shed happy tears that he had a judge who 
dared administer the law even to the heir apparent, 
and that he had a son who in his sober second 
thought accepted the judgment of the law. Has 
free America in the twentieth century less reverence 
for law than the House of Lancaster had five hundred 
years ago? In one respect the Roman tribunes per- 
formed for the Romian people the office that our 
judges do for us — they had the power to veto laws 
that struck at fundamental rights. You remember 
that when the plebs were advised to do away with 
tribunes by those whose purpose had been thwarted 
by them, the tribunes recalled the people to their 
senses with a fable. Once upon a time, they said 
the wolves advised the sheep to get rid of their 
watch dogs, because they interfered with the sheep 
going where they pleased and were really the only 
obstacle to a perfect understanding between the 
forest and the fold! When afterward the people 
did give up their tribunes, they lost their liberty, 
and they never regained it till they got them back. 
Your watch dog may annoy the sheep when they wish 
to go astray — he may even nip one of them now and 
then as he tries to bring them back — but let the flock 

79 



think twice before they exchange the watch dog for 
the wolf. In that terrible indictment against George 
III which Thomas Jefferson drew in the Declaration 
of Independence, two of the heaviest counts were 
these: 

* ' He has obstructed the Administration of 
Justice by refusing his Assent to laws for establishing 
Judiciary Powers. 

''He has made Judges dependent on his Will 
alone, for the Tenure of their Offices and the 
Amount and Payment of their Salaries. ' ' 

Are we prepared to accept another George III 
in the shape of a popular majority? 

Our day has witnessed the first widespread and 
determined effort to secure the establishment of a 
permanent international court. The world's con- 
fidence in courts has become so deeply rooted that we 
have reason to hope that the end of war is in sight. 
Is it not remarkable that our day should have wit- 
nessed also a serious and calculated effort to abolish 
courts altogether? That two such propositions 
should have been the birth of the same time will be 
one of the marvels of history. 

The proposal to recall judges for unpopular de- 
cisions is nothing less than a proposal to abolish 
courts. To abolish courts is to abolish freedom. 
However innocent the motives of those who propose 
this measure, no deadlier blow was ever aimed at the 
heart of human liberty than this. The people have 
only to understand it to reject it. They are not 
ready to throw away the fruits of their long labors 
and unnumbered battles, labors endured and battles 
waged for this very thing, that under the broad 

80 



shield of a sacred and inviolable justice the weakest 
or most hated might rest secure in their liberty, their 
property, their lives. They will discover the tyrant 
under this flattering disguise. And in the end they 
will consign to obloquy the names of those who 
would have tempted them to their destruction. 



81 



A CITY WITHOUT CITIZENS 

A Speech at the Dinner to the President of the United States, 

Given by the Residents of IVashington, under the AuS' 

pices of the Board of Trade and the Chamber of 

Commerce, at the New Willard Hotel in 

Washington, May 8, 1909. 

Mr. Chairman, the President of the United 
States, Members of the Committee and Fellow 
Guests: — I pledge you in a sentiment that is al- 
most a prayer — **May this prove a fortunate day 
for the District of Columbia!" Without doubt the 
people of the District look upon the occasion that 
has drawn us here as a most happy augury. The 
chief magistrate of the nation, not more respected 
than beloved, has signified his willingness to sit at 
their board, to break their bread and taste their salt. 
It is a proof of interest and kindness that has touched 
all hearts. We who are seated around these tables 
are only a handful out of many thousands who in 
thought and sympathy are with us at this feafit. 
Presidents have come and gone, doing their duty by 
the District as they saw it, but in the press and throng 
of larger duties too often prevented from giving to 
local matters the attention they deserved. N^ver be- 
fore has a President, at the very beginning of his term, 
thus held out the hand of friendship to our people. 
Our President has seen much of Washington. But 
more than that he has traveled far and wide; he 

82 



has studied the capitals of other countries, their 
institutions and their laws. And thus he adds to 
the true promptings of a generous heart the wisdom 
of a ripe experience. Those are the qualities that are 
needed here and now. It is the hour for a statesman. 
The population of the District has increased so 
rapidly, it is growing so in wealth and beauty, the 
greatness of its future is already so assured, that 
the time has come, when the true relations between 
the District and the nation must be clearly conceived 
and accurately defined, and when an ideal must be 
formed for the District of Columbia — an ideal to be 
worked for through generations, true enough and 
grand enough to claim the attention and the devotion 
of all the land. 

The men who made the constitution were absolute- 
ly certain of one thing, and that was that this federal 
government must have a home of its own. ''Over 
such district," the Constitution, in so many words, 
declares, "the Congress shall exercise exclusive leg- 
islation in all cases whatsoever." So far as general 
legislation is concerned there is no power in Congress 
to delegate this authority. It must legislate itself. 
"When it attempted once to bestow upon a terri- 
torial legislature for the district the authority to 
make general laws, the court declared the attempt 
unconstitutional and vain. The utmost it can do in 
this direction is to authorize the enactment of local 
regulations. No attempt to legislate for Washington 
will be worth the making unless it is made in the 
same spirit in which the founders worked. It was 
said of an Eastern temple, "It was designed by Titans 
and finished by jewelers." The tribute is capable of 

83 



a double meaning. A great work should be grandly 
conceived and then executed with minutest pains. 
We wish as much for Washington. But the jeweler 
must not meddle with the architect's design. If he does 
men may say: ''It was planned by Titans, it was 
finished by pygmies. ' ' Less than half a century 
had elapsed from the founding of the capital before 
a Congress was found pusillanimous enough to sur- 
render and cede back thirty square miles of federal 
soil ; and the noble patrimony the nation had received 
from The Father of his Country was broken in two, 
and the Virginia portion cast away. Our task to- 
night is to put the Washington of our day to the 
test of the great principles that controlled the founders 
of our government, to view the work they left us in 
the light of all that has developed since, and to plan 
for the future as men of their vision would have 
planned in our surroundings. 

What do we mean when we say the District of 
Columbia ? There are at least three meanings in 
which the expression may be accurately used. It 
may mean the mere territory, the seventy square 
miles of land and water. It may mean the municipal 
corporation which has been created by the act of 
Congress. It may mean the political community, 
which may be called, and by the Suprem^e Court has 
been repeatedly called, for certain purposes, a state. 
In this third sense it is not a mere municipal cor- 
poration but is filled with the sovereignty of the 
United States of America. It is of the utmost 
importance to distinguish between these meanings, 
especially between the second and the third, if we 
would keep our thinking clear. Let us take a moment 

84 



to trace this distinction in the transactions of a cen- 
tury. 

When the United States, in 1800, took posses- 
sion of this territory it found local self-government 
here. For two generations it left it undisturbed. 
"Prior to 1871," said Mr. Justice Bradley, in a case 
before the court of last resort, "the government of 
the United States, except so far as the protection of 
its OAvn public buildings and property was concerned, 
took no part in the local government. The officers 
of the departments, even the President himself, ex- 
ercised no local authority in city affairs." In 1871 
the Congress created here a new government, expressly 
"for municipal purposes." It had its governor and 
its legislature — the latter, of course, elected by the 
people. It had also a board of public works, whose 
members, including the governor as its head, were 
appointed by the President and Senate. This board 
laid out the mOney raised in taxes and assessed the 
owners benefited by improvements. The court held 
that its acts were binding on the District, and that, 
in spite of its appointment by the President, it was 
only a branch of the municipal government. Thus 
matters remained until 1874, when Congress tore 
down all it had previously done and started new. The 
Governor and the board of public works were abol- 
ished, and the power which they had exercised was 
entrusted to a commission of three, to be appointed by 
the President and Senate. Four years later, in 1878, 
the new arrangement was made permanent. Never- 
theless the contention was made before the Supreme 
Court of the United States that the effect of the new 
act was to destroy the District of Columbia as a mun- 

85 



icipal corporation, except in name, and to make 
it nothing more than a department of the national 
government. The contention was ruled down. The 
fact that its officers w^ere appointed by the President, 
said the court, did not make the District of Columbia 
any less a municipal body corporate. Recognizing 
the general desirableness of local self-government, it 
held that the principle of representative government 
was legally satisfied when the appointment of local 
officers was made by other officers who themselves 
had been elected by the people, saying: ''The people 
are the recognized source of all authority, and to 
this authority it must come at last, whether im- 
mediately or by a circuitous process." Whether a 
flaw is to be found in this reasoning as applied to 
the situation before the court, inasmuch as the people 
of the District of Columbia, the people to be governed, 
never did have a share in electing the President and 
Senate, who were the appointing officers, I will not 
stop here to inquire; for my present purpose is to 
point out the separation that has always been 
recognized between the District of Columbia, as a 
mere municipal corporation, and the District of 
Columbia as a quasi state. 

There is only one sovereign in the District of 
Columbia. Indeed, in respect to sovereignty the sit- 
uation is precisely the same as if there were no other 
domain affected by the central government, — as if 
all its functions were performed here. Wliy, then, 
it may be asked, should there be such a municipal- 
ity as the District of Columbia at all ? Wliy should 
not the general government take direct control, and 
adminster all tlie affairs of the District through its 

86 



own bureaus? It would not be so easy to answer 
that question if two facts were other than they are. 
First, if there were no citizens of the United States 
except those who live in the District; second, if 
the district elected the national officers. But there 
are 350,000 people here, and there are some ninety 
millions outside, and all are citizens of the United 
States; and the 350,000 who live here have some in- 
terests which they do not hold in common with the 
ninety millions who live outside. It is, in part at 
least, for the recognition and protection of these 
separate and peculiar interests that a municipal gov- 
ernment exists and is required. All the more is it 
needed by reason of the fact that there is no suffrage. 
Let us picture what might be. The streets and 
public works might all be put under the War Depart- 
ment, the public health under the Surgeon-General, 
the charities made a bureau in the Department of 
Commerce and Labor, or perhaps of the Interior, 
and the schools turned over to the Commissioner of 
Education. And so it might go on until the local 
government was completely bureaucratic, — until the 
rod of national administration, turned serpent, had 
swallowed up all the little rods of local administra- 
tion and was left alone upon the floor. In the mean- 
time the city, growing by leaps and bounds, has 
doubled and trebled its present population, and we 
have here a million people, without a word to say, 
in theory or in fact, directly or indirectly, about 
the streets they walk, the water they drink, the 
light they burn, or the education of their children 
— everything done for them, and done by officers in 
whose selection they had no voice, and who have 

87 



been selected with no particular reference to their 
opinions or their needs. To some of us that is not 
a pleasing spectacle. 

Certainly we must not forget that this is a nat- 
ional city. There is little risk of that. But there 
are institutions, many and important, which are not 
national in their aim or character. They are exactly 
such institutions as the same numerical population 
would require were this not the nation 's capital. Thai 
is true of the institutions of charity and punishment. 
We should need to have schools, recording offices, 
post offices and courts; we should need streets and 
bridges, and a thousand things besides, by reason 
of the fact that we are a city. Institutions that 
answer the needs of the community merely as a com- 
munity, without reference to the national government 
— should not these be treated as local institutions? 
Should they not be administered as a part of the muni- 
cipal government and officered by men identified with 
the district? 

Those courts of the District which deal not ex- 
clusively with local controversies but in large measure 
with disputes to which the nation is a party may 
perhaps be fairly made up, one-half, of miembers 
drawn from the locality, and one-half from tlie nation 
at large. This seems the miore appropriate inasmuch 
as those who hold these offices hold them daring 
good behavior, and when they come here come 
hoping to behave well enough to remain through 
life. But many offices relate exclusively to this com- 
munity, at least as much so as the offices of any 
community can be said to relate to itself alone, and 
why should not these be filled by local citizens? 

88 



Even if there should be no statute thus restricting 
the selection, ought not such a course to be pursued 
as a permanent policy? Why should the people of 
the district have their deeds recorded by a man from 
California? Why should Washington be the only 
city in the land that cannot have a postmaster ap- 
pointed from among its citizens ? If we are to keep up 
the form of municipal government at all, does not a 
fair consistency demand that we should treat it as 
municipal, — as existing, among other purposes, to 
care for all that is peculiar and local in the inter- 
ests and needs of the community? Will it not be 
wisdom to treat it so? Let us not forget that there 
are thousands upon thousands here w^ho have no 
other abiding place. Their roots have struck deep 
into the soil. They love their city with all the nation- 
al pride we share with them and with that tender 
sentiment which we call, ' ' the love of home, ' ' besides. 
Is it wise to treat them as aliens in the house of their 
fathers? Others have lived here till all ties with 
other places are dissolved ; and they expect that their 
children will live here when they are gone. These 
people, so completely and irrevocably identified with 
the place, constitute an element not wisely to be over- 
looked when one is considering how local affairs may 
be most prudently and loyally administered. 

Who knows? Perhaps we have come already 
to the parting of the ways. Little by little the local 
hold is lost. Here a hospital is drawn under the 
control of a department. There the jail slips out 
of the hands of the district into the hands of the 
attorney general. Now it is proposed that the schools 
be placed under a bureau; and now, that the city 



shall be officered on the principles of efficiency alone, 
— by any one who can be found who is most com- 
petent, though he never saw Washington before. It 
would be something to assume that among 350,000 
such as we find gathered here, not a single man could 
be found, capable of conducting the business of the 
city. But if it should be conjectured that in some 
far off place a commissioner might be found somewhat 
more efficient, would that difference in efficiency 
make up for the sacrifice of one more bond — some- 
times it seems as if it were the last — ^between the 
government and the locality? The problem of city 
government is not altogether, I venture to think, a 
matter of perfecting the machinery. Men are not 
altogether machines. They have sentiments, they have 
hearts. And if there had not been sentiment and 
heart as well as brain, there would be today no 
Washington. As far as the municipal government 
is concerned, the people of the district seem to have 
settled down to the arrangement that there should 
be no suffrage. They accept it very much as Lord 
Dundreary's brother Sam accepted his embarrass- 
ment in being bom, and especially in being bom 
bald-headed. ''You see — Sam — he wasn't consulted 
— and there he was — and it was too late to do any- 
thing about it." But suffrage or no suffrage in 
municipal affairs has nothing to do with the princi- 
ple of which I speak. I believe it should be the 
policy of the government, alongside of the national 
spirit that inspires all hearts, to foster and 
perpetuate a sturdy local patriotism,, a local and 
peculiar civic pride, — and, to this end, that all such 
institutions as are purely local in their character 

90 



should be scrupulously retained under the district 
government, and that all offices of this kind should 
be filled by those who have becojme residents of 
Washington for good and all. 

Sir, I am not inclined to discuss tonight the 
various proposed changes in the constitution of the 
city government. These concern a possible increase 
of efficiency in the municipal machine. In what I 
am yet to say I prefer to dwell upon a broader 
question. But no one ought to refer to the form of 
government that has given shape to our affairs since 
1874 mthout doing justice to the splendid advances 
that have been made under its direction. In 1878 
the plan was adopted of raising upon the ratable 
property here a tax of one and one-half per cent and of 
matching that with an equal amount from the national 
treasury. Up to that time the district had carried 
the burden, year by year, almost or quite alone, and 
was sinking under a debt of many millions. Uuder 
the new arrangement Washington has sprung to her 
feet. Parks have been laid out, avenues extended, 
bridges constructed, public buildings erected, grade 
crossings abolished, railway terminals improved, a 
magnificient new station built, the sewage and water 
systems practically made over, millions upon millions 
spent towards making the city in health and beauty 
what it ought to be. Meantime absolute fidelity in 
the discharge of duties, no stain or hint of corruption, 
scarely a dishonest transaction even charged. Sure- 
ly that is record for any city to cherish and for those 
who have had a share in making it to look back upon 
with pride. 

Some forbidding obstacles have been encountered 

91 



and are met with still. One is, the being compelled 
to pay for permanent improvements out of the cur- 
rent income. What other city is expected to pay 
for its great works, to last for generations, out of its 
ordinary receipts, meanwhile taking it out of its 
schools and scrimping its legitimate expenses? Any 
other city would raise the money on bonds and pay 
them a little at a time. Washington need not be 
bonded, since the national treasury can supply it 
with the loan and let it be paid back at a reasonable 
rate; but the principle is sound. It is enforced by 
the late Secretary of the Treasury in his able report 
for 1908, where he sets forth with great lucidity 
the need of a national budget to bring about an ad- 
justment between disbursements and receipts, with 
a rigid separation between expenditures for the or- 
dinary service of the government and those for per- 
manent public works, the latter to be met by bond 
issues. 

But there are obstacles of graver import, and 
they constitute defects radical and without remedy 
in the present relation between nation and district. 
They can be removed only by a change in that re- 
lation itself. We shall all agree that to legislate 
wisely requires two things, first, a lively interest 
in the object of legislation, second, a clear intelli- 
gence touching the subject in hand. There being 
no representati^'e from the district itself in either 
branch of congress, it becomes necessary to commit 
the interests of the district, and the interests of the 
nation in the district, to hands unfamiliar with the 
subject and without any lively interest therein. 
The congress as a whole cannot be expected to supply 

92 



these requisites. No one pretends it does. It is en- 
gaged upon a thousand subjects, many of which ap- 
pear to its members to be vastly more important 
than any that concerns the district. We cannot wonder 
at it — it is in the nature of things tJiat it should be 
so. The step logically required by this condition is 
next taken. A committee in the house and a com- 
mittee in the senate are especially charged with these 
affairs. Not that their word is accepted as final. 
If it were, some difficulties would be escaped. But in 
the end their report must run the gauntlet of the 
whole house or senate. Here ignorance of district 
affairs has often shown itself so egregious and glar- 
ing that it could excite nothing but laughter if tears 
were not often a fitter recognition of the folly. And 
when that occurs there is no representative for the 
district to meet the ignorant unfounded claim; 
350,000 people are voiceless in that hall. The com- 
mittees cannot meet the emergency. To expect it 
would be to expect more than mortal men can do. 
Who are the members of the committees? Are they 
senators and representatives set apart for this work 
and free to devote themselves entirely to such busi- 
ness? By no means. They have their own con- 
stituents to serve, and they have, besides, their share 
of responsibility for the general legislation, like all 
their fellow menibers. They are appointed; they 
do the best they can; and if they give sufficient 
time to our affairs to understand our problems, they 
run the risk of losing their seats entirely by being 
thought at home to have neglected their own states 
or districts. I am credibly informed that the risk 
has turned into a certainty in more instances than 

93 



one. But, more than that, the membership of 
house and senate changes and the membership of 
the committees changes with it. Hardly has a mem- 
ber become reasonably acquainted with our subject 
when he is called away, another takes his place, and 
the whole process of education must be begun again. 

That is the radical and incurable defect of the 
present system. Keep your three commissioners if 
you will, or substitute for them a single head, improve 
the machinery of municipal administration all you 
can, until it runs with the regularity of a Swiss 
watch — you have not touched the trouble. What is 
needed is, two men in the house and one man in 
the senate, — real live men, men who have lived long 
in the District of Columbia and belong to her, men 
who know her need and her capacity, who know the 
history and condition of her institutions, her chari- 
ties, her prisons, the views and aspirations of her 
people, men who are proud of their connection with 
her and proud that to her soil has been committed 
the ark of civil and religious liberty. What we need 
is members of these bodies, with the prestige that be- 
longs to members, not figure-heads, not lobbyists, not 
delegates, but a mjember of the senate and two mem- 
bers of the house, able, enlightened, informed, fit to 
represent the will and judgment of 350,000 citizens 
gathered within these bounds. 

But that requires an amendment of the con- 
stitution! So it does. An amendment in strict ac- 
cord with the principles of the constitution, made 
necessary by the changed conditions of a hundred 
and twenty years, made unavoidable and inevitable 
by the changes that will take place in the fifty or one 

94 



hundred years to come. Do you imagine that when 
a million or fiften hundred thousand shall be 
swarming in our borders they will be the only people 
in this broad domain to have no hand in the govern- 
ment of this magnificent republic, no word in the 
election of its president, no tongue in the national 
assembly? When a million men are here, when thej' 
ask why they alone can have no part in a repub- 
lican form of government, do you imagine the}^ will 
call it a suflBcient answer to be told, "Because you 
live in Washington. If you lived in the poorest \'illage 
in the land, you might, but not while you live 
here." Bear in mind I am not speaking of muni- 
cipal suffrage. I am speaking of the simpie 
of a million American citizens to have a share — less 
than one-hundredth part it would be — in the legis- 
lation tliat concerns their country and its capital. 
Suppose they have no more right than the same 
number of people who live anywhere else in the 
United States. Have they not as much? And that 
is all the right of which I speak. 

But I hear it said, ''The people of the District 
do not care for suffrage." Well, all I can say to that 
is this. If the people of the District of Columbia 
do not really care to have a part in the government 
of this splendid countrj^, they do not deserve to have 
it, and nobody need fear it will be thrust upon 
them. But I cannot believe that statement. 

**Say, Seigniors, are the old Niles dry?" 

I cannot believe that the human heart has changed. 
I cannot believe that principles have lost their power. 
I cannot believe that the deep instincts that built 

95 



up this wonderful fabric of free government have 
died out here in the very seat of its majesty, 
and that here alone the "bright consummate flower'* 
of liberty has gone to seed. There is no doubt that 
they need quickening. There is no doubt that they 
have sunk into the torpor of faculties disused. But 
hold before their eyes the hope of that which I am 
now describing and you shall see whether self-respect 
and the desire for self-government are dead. 

Sir, if I had it in my power tonight, to dispose 
of this matter as I would, do you know what I would 
do? I would not change the constitution. I would 
not give the people of the district suffrage. What I 
would do is this. I would set to their dry hearts 
the flame of that old Promethean torch, the love of 
liberty. I would fill them with divine unrest at their 
condition. I would set beside that condition a 
picture of the dignity and power they might enjoy 
as real citizens of their country. I would move them 
first to desire and then to demand their portion of 
our heritage. I would nerve them to toil for it and 
fight for it through years of bitter opposition — and 
then at last, when the agitation had created a new 
Washington — when four hundred or five hundred 
thousand people were calling as with one mighty 
voice for the great prize of representative govern- 
ment — then — then I would bestow it on them. And, 
sir, I believe that is exactly what the god of timie 
will do. 

A city of the dumb! Mr. Chairman, I have 
heard you speak of a little village on an island off 
the New England coast, inhabited entirely by deaf 
mutes. They live unto themselves. They marry and 

96 



intermarry and rear children who are dumb as they. 
They go about their task but speak no word. The 
busy hum of life goes on around them; the shuttles 
of the world's activities fly to and fro; but into the 
growing web they weave no strand. Sir, I will not 
extend the parallel. It is too obvious and too pain- 
ful to be drawn. But that is not the Washington 
that shall be. Only let the agitation begin. Let 
it start iiere tonight. Why not make the occasion 
historic? Let every true son of Washington, native 
or adopted, go out from this feast strengthened and 
heartened for a long enlistment. Let him know for 
once in his life the glory of being possessed by a 
grand idea — the sublime enthusiasm of being lost in 
absolute devotion to a great cause. Let them meet 
and join hands and stir one another's hearts, quicken 
one another's minds and sustain one another's 
courage. Let it go on. It will meet with opposition ; 
it will meet with ridicule; it will meet with censure; 
it will take years, it may take many — but it can have 
but one possible outcome if the sons of Washington 
are worthy of the name they bear. 

Again I say I am not speaking now of municipal 
suffrage at all. Let the present arrangement, or 
some improved substitute for it, be continued if you 
please. What has that to do with the broad and 
fundamental fact that the hundreds of thousands here 
should have their due and proportionate represen- 
tation in the National Assembly — should have the 
same right that other citizens enjoy of giving their 
votes in the election of the chief magistrate oi the 
republic? The Republic! It is not alone for the 
District of Columbia that I bring the proposition 

97 



forward. The interests of the nation would be served 
as well. They would be served, first of all, by the 
increased efficiency and propriety of the laws that 
would be enacted; in the next place by the fact that 
the members from) the district, being familiar with 
the local situation and serving on the local committees, 
would relieve the members from other states of much 
of their present burden, leaving them freer to per- 
form the duties for which they were specially selected. 
Further, it would serve the nation by adding to the 
congress men of weight and influence in national 
concerns. We should have here a constituency pe- 
culiarly rich in material for representatives. But, 
more perhaps than all the rest, the change would 
serve the interests of the whole nation by recognizing 
the grand principle of representative government 
here, in the most conspicuous position in the country, 
where hitherto it has been cast aside. Men could 
no longer point the finger of scorn at us and say: 
''Washington gives the lie to your pretensions. 
Look! In the very seat of national greatness you 
acknowledge by your acts that your form of govern- 
ment is a failure." Until we are honest enough and 
brave enough to live up to our principles we shall 
deserve all our troubles, and, sir, from the bottom 
of my heart I do believe that the greatest troubles 
we have spring from this very fact, that we have 
turned our back upon those principles. We shall 
never find peace or safety until we return to them 
again. 

Shall we say we fear the suffrages of ignorance 
and vice — the ignorance and vice that we ourselves 
are to blame for — that could not last a generation 

98 



if we did our duty by our fellow men? Shame on 
the race or the community that holds in its hands the 
wealth of the continent and carries in its brains the 
accumulated culture of the centuries and yet re- 
fuses to lift that ignorance and vice to the level of 
enlightenment and ^^rtue. Tear down your shacks 
and shanties. Let in the sun upon your noisome 
alleys. Build decent habitations for the poor to dwell 
in. Make your prisons moral hospitals instead of 
breeding cells for crime. Spread education broadcast 
in the streets. Let us do the work of Christians at 
our doors before we admit that our fathers were fools 
and that democratic government is all a dark mistake. 
Never until the men of wealth and education have 
spent their last surplus dollar, and exhausted the in- 
genuity of their brains, in the effort to make their fel- 
low men worthy to be sharers in the government, 
never until then will they have a right to hide behind 
an excuse like that. I admit that an ignorant and 
degraded class armed with the ballot is a menace to 
the safety of the state ; but I deny that it is a greater 
menace in the end than that same class robbed of 
its rights, thrust do^vn into the dark, and left as no 
longer requiring to be regarded or assisted because 
no longer having any part in the affairs of state. 
Strip men of the ballot and you take away from so- 
ciety the most powerful inducement that can prompt 
selfish human nature to educate and elevate its help- 
less and its poor. We must find fault with the 
Creator if we wish to complain that wealth, virtue and 
culture cannot he safe in the neighborhood of poverty, 
ignorance and vice. He means that it shall be so. 
He sees Blagden's Alley as well as Dupont Circle, 

99 



and he has made it certain by the laws of nature, 
by every wind that breathes across the city, by every 
tiny insect that takes its unregarded flight from 
home to hom:e, that Dupont Circle shall not be safe 
while Blagden's Alley is rotting with disease and 
filth. The very laws of nature are democratic. It is 
just the same in government. A community that has 
the poAver to lift ignorance and vice to its own level, 
and will not stretch out its hand to do it, deserves 
to be endangered by ignorance and vice ; and Eternal 
Justice will see to it that it is so. We cannot escape 
our duties — let us face them, then, like men. 

If Franklin or Jefferson were here today and saw 
this mighty population with no voice in its affairs, 
he would lay his finger, like a wise physician, on the 
body politic and say, "Here — here is where you are 
ailing. Have faith in the principles that brought us 
through." Let us take up the stitch our fathers 
dropped. Let us apply to our situation the rules of 
government they applied to theirs. If you should say 
to Jefferson, "Why should we be disturbed? Will 
it give us more interest on our money?" Jefferson 
would answer you, "That I cannot tell, but this I 
know, that 'the man who loves freedom for anything 
but freedom's self was made to be a slave.' " Even 
if we should fail, men would write over our graves 
the profound saying of Guizot, "The struggle itself 
supplied in some measure the place of liberty." But 
we cannot fail. Is this an hour to doubt or question 
the principles of free government ? Now, when those 
principles, encouraged by their success upon this 
continent, are shaking every throne upon the globe? 
When on the shores of the Bosphorus Young Turkey 

100 



is making good its claim to constitutional government ? 
When Persia is starting from her revery and old 
China is turning from the slumber of four thousand 
years ? Now, when in the islands of the soutli Pacific 
we ourselves are reaching out a hand to lead a 
strange race into the ordered paths of Anglo Saxon 
freedom? Let the sons of Washington beware lest 
the little brown men of the Philippines enter the 
kingdom of representative government before them. 
If the people of Columbia prefer to take their ease, 
no rude reformer will disturb their rest. But when 
we have passed away men mil describe us as the 
dying patriarch in his prophetic vision pictured the 
most degenerate of his tribes: "Issachar is a strong 
ass couching down between two burdens : and he saw 
that rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant ; 
and bowed his shoulder to bear, and became a servant 
unto tribute." 

Sir, the danger to this country, lies not, as we 
sometimes think, in the poor immigrant who flees 
to us from far, still smarting from the lash of tyranny, 
— ignorant and low-minded though he be. The prize 
of citizenship will appeal to him. He will clutch it 
and hold it fast as "the immediate jewel of his soul." 
The danger lies in him who, "like the base Judean, 
throws a pearl away richer than all his tribe ' ' — in the 
man who will share the blessings of liberty without 
bearing its burdens — in the man who is willing that 
impudence and theft shall sit in the seat of power, 
so long as he is left free to pile up his millions, or 
scatter them like a lord on the playground of 
Europe. 

The capital of the United States — what is it? 

101 



It is not marble palaces nor lofty domes nor splendid 
obelisks. If it is anything, it typifies a great idea. 
The deepest word that was ever uttered to interpret 
that idea was wrung from lips that trembled between 
hope and despair upon the field of Gettysburg — "of 
the people, for the people, by the people." Can 
Washington typify that idea while it stands as it 
does today? It cannot be. It must be changed. It 
will be changed. The time will surely come when 
he who stands in the shadow of these majestic 
structures, and of the prouder ones that shall arise, 
will have no cause to hang his head for shame at any 
violation of our principles, but wdll feel that here, 
here more truly than anywhere else on the face of the 
whole earth, he is standing in their august and visible 
presence. 

And now, Mr. President, at the end as at the be- 
ginning we turn to you — ^not to express the hope that 
you may discharge the new duties with clearer sight 
or firmer fidelity than you discharged the old, for 
that would be impossible, but that in your more exalt- 
ed station you may find a wider field for your bene- 
ficent endeavors, cheered, as you will be, by the per- 
sonal love of millions of your fellows and supported 
by the unwavering faith of all America. 



102 



ROBERT BURNS: A POET FOR THE 
WORLD. 



An Address Delivered at the Unveiling of the Burns Monu- 
ment in Barre, Vermont, July 2/, 1899. 

One hundred and three years ago this very day 
Robert Burns lay dying in Dumfries. Thank God, 
there have been few sadder deaths than that. His 
four little sons had been brought in from a neighbor's 
house to hear his parting words. In the next room 
his wife, his ''bonnie Jean," dearer to his wayward 
heart than he himself had ever known, lay waiting her 
hour in childbed. Poverty sat upon his hearthstone, 
and his last words were mingled with curses for the 
cruel legal agent whose threatening letter had tor- 
tured and embittered his dying hours. His country 
had praised and petted and then had shunned and 
neglected him, and he had been his o\vn worst enemy, 
until now in a rude tenement, surrounded with all 
the circumstances of misery, poor, heart-broken and 
abandoned, he was passing away from life. Thus 
was being fulfilled at last the very prophecy he had 
uttered in verse one bright spring morning ten years 
before, ''following his plow along the mountain-side," 
and musing over the ''wee, modest, crimson-tipped 
flower" his share had crushed and buried: 

103 



Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate, 
That fate is thine — no distant date; 
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate. 

Full on thy bloom. 
Till, crushed beneath the furrow's weight, 

Shall be thy doom. 

Outside in the streets men were gathered in 
hushed groups waiting the news that he was dead, 
half conscious that the greatest of Scotchmen had 
been living in their midst. Whatever they may have 
thought, we know today that the young man who 
lay dying there that morning, too poor to pay his 
debts, was leaving to his country the richest her- 
itage she ever possessed, or perhaps ever would 
possess, — ^leaving his country-men a name and fame 
that would be their strongest bond, that would be 
their pride and boast wherever the scattered clans 
should be foregathered, in lands beyond the sea and in 
a century unborn ! 

"We have proof before us; for here today upon 
a foreign shore, thousands of miles from the scene 
of all his sorrows and joys, among mountains beauti- 
ful as his own Scotland's, but which his eye or fancy 
never saw, men of his blood, whose fathers' fathers' 
fathers may have seen his face, have raised to him, 
from the eternal granite of these hills, a shape of 
beauty and of power, to testify forever of Scotia's 
undying loyalty and love. 

It was difficult for his neighbors a hundred years 
ago to realize his greatness. They saw him at his 
common tasks, day by day, and knew the passions 
and weaknesses that marked him for a man — and he 
was indeed humanest of the human. Tliey had not be- 

104 



fore their eyes the image of Bums that we behold 
today, the glorious bard whose fame has been grow- 
ing through the century, the figure that walks the 
fields of song in immortal youth and steps out to us 
from the pages of other poets wearing the brightest 
WT.'eaths of praise that can be woven out of words. 
They onl}^ saw the man. Today the diflSculty is 
reversed — we only see the poet; and what we covet 
most today is that nearer, more familiar sight. We 
wish to know the poet, but we wish to know the man 
as well, feeling sure that as our conception of the 
poet has exalted and idealized the man they saw and 
knew, so their sight and knowledge of the man, if we 
could only share it, would warm and humanize our 
conception of the bard. This is our delightful task 
today — to form, if possible, one whole, true, admiring 
yet unflattering conception of Robert Burns. 

One thing we must not forget, and that is that 
Burns never looked upon himself as we look upon him. 
He never dreamed of the immortality of fame unt-o 
which he was born. He never wrote for us, for the 
unknown future. He never wrote for a great unseen 
public even of his own time. The modest, manly 
words with which he prefaced his poems when he 
printed them, show clearly how humble his ambition 
was. To liimself he was but the Aryshire bard; and 
it was an accident that he published at all. Penni- 
less and hiding from arrest, he was persuaded by 
friends that a small edition of his songs might yield 
him a profit and help him on his way to the West 
Indies. So the Kilmarnock edition came out, six hund- 
red copies <'rom an obscure country press. The unpre- 
tentious little book contained, among the rest, that 

105 



perfect love song. It was upon a Lummas Night, The 
Twa Dogs. The Mouse, The Mountain Daisy, and The 
Cotter's Saturday Night. No such body of verse 
had come to light since the age of Elizabeth. We 
know what a sensation it made. The whole course of 
the poet's life w^as turned. The venture brought him 
in three hundred dollars, and took him up to Edin- 
burgh and made him the lion of the hour. But 
the remarkable thing is that scarcely one of these 
w^onderful productions had been written to be printed 
at all. They had eased his own morbid or passion- 
ate hours ; they had passed from hand to hand among 
his friends; and that was all he had ever expected. 
And, when you think of it, what were the subjects 
of his verse? Merely his own experiences, his own 
loves and hates, or some incident that set him mor- 
alizing or stirred the deeper and finer forces of his 
nature. Look at his poem to the mouse. As he 
walks behind the plough one day the share turns up 
a mouse's nest and the ''wee, sleekit, cow'rin, 
tim'rous, beastie" scurries away across the field. 
Now what shall Rob do ? Go to the house and sharp- 
en the quill and write a great poem to be read a 
century afterwards? Pish! It never enters his 
head. He only calls back the lout who is running 
after the mouse to kill it, asking him what harm the 
mouse has ever done him, and then, as he steadies 
the plough, he falls a-talking to himself. 

Crooning to a body's sel' 
Does weel eneugh. 

We owe it to no vanity or care of his that we 
are permitted today to overhear him. We owe it 

106 



to that larger providence which somehow or other 
does manage to preserve to the world the world's 
richest things: 

I'm truly sorry man's dominion 
Has broken nature's social union, 
And justifies that ill opinion 

Which makes thee startle 
At me, thy poor earth-born companion 

And fellow-mortal! 

Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste, 
And weary winter comin' fast, 
And cozie here, beneath the blast, 

Thou thought to dwell, 
Till, crash! the cruel coulter past 

Out through thy cell. 

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane 

In proving foresight may be vain; 

The best -laid schemes o' mice and men 

Gang aft a gley, 
And lea'e us nought but grief and pain 

For promised joy. 

How close and human it all is, and nearer, more 
pathetic still, when the mouse's sad case minds him 
of his own : 

Still thou art blest, compared wi' me! 
The present only toucheth thee: 
But, och! I backward cast my e'e 

On prospects drear! 
And forward, though I canna see, 

I guess and fear. 

In The Twa Dogs he makes his own collie and 
some nobleman's New Foundland keep up an imagin- 
ary conversation on the life and manners of the high 
and low. But literature cannot show a sharper, 

107 



shrewder, merrier commentary on the characters and 
fortunes of the rich and poor. The peasant life is here 
pictured. Burns 's dog admits that their lot is hard, 
but there is a brighter side, for 

— whyles twalpennie worth o' nappy- 
Can mak' the bodies unco happy; 
They lay aside their private cares. 
To mind the Kirk and State affairs.. 

liove blinks. Wit slaps and social Mirth, 
Forgets there's Care upo' the earth. 

Then it is the New Foundland's turn, and he 
proceeds to lay bare the vices and follies of the great : 

At operas and plays parading, 
Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading; 

They mak' a tour, and tak' a whirl. 
To learn bon ton and see the worl'. 

Burns was sometimes taken to task by his high- 
born patrons, for choosing such homely subjects. 
Thank goodness, he never paid any heed to them. 
He sat one day behind a fine lady in church. She 
had a louse on her bonnet. The louse is there still — 
it always will be. The world will never get over 
laughing at it and wishing 

O wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursel's as ithers see us! 

That poem has pricked more bubbles of vanity 
than all the preachers that ever stood in pulpits. 
And yet, do not imagine Burns wrote it to teach 
a great moral lesson. I feel certain he wrote it out 
of pure mischief. There was almost as much truth 
as mockery in that disclaimer of his: 

108 



For me, an aim I never fash; 
I rhyme for fun. 

But now turn to his love songs. How warm 
and thrilling they are. Why? Because he \vrote 
them for his mistress, not, as the poet does now, for 
his magazine. 

Yestreen, when to the trembling string 
The dance gaed through the lighted ha', 
To thee my fancy took its wing — 
I sat, but neither heard nor saw: 
Though this was fair, and that was braw, 
And yon the toast of all the town, 
I sighed, and said, amang them a'. 
Ye are na Mary .Morrison. 

Then there is that little drama, The Jolly 
Beggars. Critics have called it the most finished and 
perfect of the poet's works. Sir Walter Scott pro- 
nounced it unsurpassed of its kind in the whole range 
of English poetry. Yet Burns gave away the only copy 
he possessed, and actually forgot that he had ever 
written it. How did he come to write it in the first 
place? ''Poosie Nansie's" was a low-down public 
house in IMauchline village, the resort of thieves and 
beggars. Burns, with two companions, passing that 
way one late autumn evening, were attracted by the 
sounds of revelry witliin. They entered and were 
rapturously welcomed by the ''merry core of randie, 
gangrel bodies," drinking, carousing, singing, in the 
full swing of their rough debauch. The poet took it 
all in, went home and made a word-picture of the 
scene, drew every character to the life, and put into 
their mouths the raciest songs that have ever ex- 
pressed the sentiments of the outcast, railing against 
the powers that be : 

109 



Life is all a variorum, 
We regard not how it goes; 
Let them cant about decorum 
Who have characters to lose. 
A fig for those by laws protected. 
Liberty's a glorious feast; 
Courts for cowards were erected. 
Churches built to please the priest. 

YoTi see how even beggary and thievedom could 
grow poetic under his touch, the touch of the same 
hand, too, that pictured the Cotter's Saturday night. 
And even the Cotter's Saturday Night we owe to 
the simplest of causes. It was composed in a mood 
of reverence induced by the peculiar solemnity with 
which Bums's father conducted their own family 
worship. Such was the origin of that unfading 
picture. Burns did not know that it was immortal — 
He only felt that it was true. 

Most of his poetry was only another form of his 
conversation. It dealt with the sam'e topics, and was 
addressed to the same persons. His brightest and 
pithiest words are often to be found in those rhyming 
epistles he sent his friends. One year he made his 
tax inventory in verse. It offers still a half -humor- 
ous, half-sorrowful picture of his poverty. Some of 
the poems, — and some of the best, too, — bristle all 
over with the names of his neighbors. So it is, for 
instance, in The Twa Herds, otherwise called The 
Holy Tulyie, all about a shameful quarrel between 
two ministers over their parish boundary. It was 
never printed while Burns lived. It was handed 
about and laughed over among the unregenerate for 
the slaps of wit and stings of sarcasm, all, unhappily, 
too well deserved. It was exactly as if a great genius 

110 



should drop do\^Tl here in our midst, take a hand in 
all our quarrels, ridicule our weaknesses, avenge him- 
self upon us for our slights, and draw with merciless 
fidelity the characters we meet day by day upon the 
street. The most conspicuous example of all this is 
probably Holy Willie's Prayer, — by common consent 
the most terrible satire in the English language. It 
was only a piece that Burns set going the rounds in 
Mauchline to gratify his grudge against a hypocrite, 
who no doubt had rejoiced to see Burns sitting on 
the penitent's stool in the kirk, and who had had 
Burns 's friend, Gavin Hamilton, hauled up in the 
same place for getting in his potatoes on the Sabbath. 
It was written solely for the men and v.omen who 
knew and despised William Fisher; but the whole 
world has read it. It was nothing but a neighborhood 
skit; and yet Calvinism itself has met with no such 
arraignment as in the literal statement of its doctrine 
in that blood-curdling first stanza: 

O Thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell, 
Wha, as it pleases best thysel'. 
Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell, 

A' for Thy glory. 
And no for ony guid or ill 

They've done afore Thee! 

After Bums came back from Edinburgh, a Lon- 
don paper offered him fifty pounds a year if he would 
send it a poem now and then. He refused. Yet he 
needed the money, and his family needed it. He had 
a foolish scruple against writing for pay; but he 
would fill the countryside with songs and satires and 
epitaphs and witty epistles — just for fun. The fact 
is, that everything he wrote that was really original, 

111 



really excellent, and that shines by its own light to- 
day, was not only the fruit of something that deeply 
touched his own life, but was written to be read 
by the men and women he knew. And so far from 
being strange, that was the very pivot of his power, 
the very secret of his success. If he had written for 
the world, not even Mauchline would have read him ; 
but w±en he wrote so that Mauchline had to read 
him, he enchained the attention of the world. The 
w^hole thing lies there in a nut-shell: he knew his 
subject, and he knew his hearers. He had perfect 
mastery of his theme and perfect sympathy with his 
audience. Now stop and tell me if those are not 
the conditions of achievement in every branch of 
art. Is not the great painter the man who knows 
what he is painting and whom he is painting for, and 
makes his picture an appeal to these people? Is 
not the great orator the man who knows his subject 
to the core, and knows his audience to the core ? And 
the poet whose wit and wisdom become part of the 
world's precious store, whose phrases become house- 
hold words, whose songs thrill in the hearts of soldiers 
and live on the lips of lovers— he is not the poet 
who shuns his fellowmen and polishes his lines for 
posterity, but the man who laughs and cries with 
them, and lives and works and suffers at their side. 
Poetry is an intense expression of the individual life. 
Nearness is power. You cannot get too close to 
your subject, nor too close to the hearts that you 
would touch and the lives that you would move. 

Burns knew well enough how to write the smooth, 
elegant English verses that had been fashionable be- 
fore him. He did write them at times, in some fit 

112 



of weakness, or when he hadn't anything in particu- 
lar to say. I presume you can find forty such among 
his poems. But there isn't one of them that would 
have kept his name alive ten years. He was writing 
of something he knew nothing about, and writing for 
people he cared nothing about; and the result is that 
nobody cares about Avhat he wrote. Now if Burns 
had received that fine university education which 
so many people think it was his great misfortune 
to have lacked, the chances are that all of his poetry 
would have been of this elegant, good- for-no thing 
order. It is not when he tries to be fine that he is 
eloquent ; it is when he lets himself go, m the dialect. 
The English of the schools was like a foreign tongue 
to him. He had to learn it; but the dialect he 
never had to learn. He spoke it before he knew 
what learning meant — he drew it in with his breath. 
Macaulay said truly that no man ever wrote an im- 
mortal work in any language except the one he 
heard about his cradle. These are the words in which 
thought kindles into flame. It is in moments of 
tremendous excitement that the finest poetic expres- 
sions have birth, and in those moments the soul 
always speaks in the tongue of its childhood — all other 
language is forgotten. You may give a Scotchman 
all the culture of the schools, until his ordinary con- 
versation shall not betray his race; but the first 
excitement will betray him. Let him get angry, and 
if he swears he'll swear in Scotch. When he falls 
in love, he'll woo in Scotch. When he tells a thrill- 
ing story, he'll tell it in Scotch; and if he gets 
"fou and unco happy," he'll sing in Scotch. Read 
Tarn O'Shanter. Burns composed it all in one win- 

113 



ter's day. His wife saw him walking back and forth 
by the river side, swinging his arms, slapping his 
thighs, and laughing as if he would burst. Then he 
came in and wrote it down. Part of it is easy 
enough for English readers, but when he warms to 
his story we need a glossary at every line. Recall 
his description of the witches' dance as Tam saw it 
through the ruined windows of the old haunted kirk : 

As Tammie glower'd, amazed and curious, 

The mirth and fun grew fast and furious: 

The piper loud and louder blew, 

The dancers quick and quicker flew, 

They reel'd, they set, they crossed, they cleekit 

Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, 

And coost her duddies to the wark, 

And linket at it in her sark! 

How was it when he spoke with the deepest 
pathos and his heart became a fountain of tears? 

We twa hae run about the braes. 

And pu'd the go wans fine; 
But we've wandered mony a weary foot 

Sin' auld lang syne. 

We twa hae paidl'd i' the burn 

Frae morning sun till dine; 
But seas between us braid hae roar'd 

Sin' auld lang syne. 

And here's a hand, my trusty fiere. 

And gie's a hand o' thine; 
And we'll tak' a right guid willie-waught 

For auld lang syne. 

His merriment, too, went the same gait: 
114 



Oh, Willie brewed a peck o' maut, 
And Rob and Allan came to pree; 

Three blither hearts, that lee-lang night. 
Ye wadna find in Christendie. i 

We are na fou, we're nae that fou, 
But just a drappie in our e'e; 

The cock may craw, the day may daw. 
And aye we'll taste the barley-bree. 

Hear him in his tenderest mood : 

John Anderson, my jo, John, 

When we were first acquent 
Your locks were like the raven, 

Your bonny brow was brent; 
But now your brow is held, John, 

Your locks are like the snaw; 
But blessings on your frosty pow, 

John Anderson, my jo. 

John Anderson, my jo, John, 

We clamb the hill thegither. 
And mony a canty day, John, 

We've had wi' ane anither; 
Now we maun totter down, John, 

But hand in hand we'll go; 
And sleep thegither at the foot, 

John Anderson, my jo. 

Or in his frankest confession. 

I lo'e her mysel', but darena weel tell. 
My poverty keeps me in awe, man, 

For making o' rhymes, and working at times. 
Does little or naething at a', man. 

Yet I wadna choose to let her refuse. 

Nor hae't in her power to say na, man; 

For though I be poor, unnoticed, obscure, 
My stomach's as proud as them a', man. 

115 



Or when lie stood upon the field of Bannock- 
burn and felt the blood of his race leaping in every 
pulse: 

Scots, wha hae wi* Wallace bled, 
Scots, wham Bruce has often led. 
Welcome to your gory bed. 
Or to victory! 

Wha will be a traitor knave? 
Wha can fill a coward's grave? 
Wha sae base as be a slave? 
Let him turn and flee! 

Wha for Scotland's king and law, 
Freedom's sword will strongly draw; 
Freeman stand, or freeman fa', 
Let him follow me! 

Lay the proud usurper low! 
Tyrants fall in every foe! 
Liberty's in every blow! 
Let us do or die! 

But I must have quoted enough, and more than 
enough, to remind you that his raciest narrative, his 
keenest mt, his bitterest satire, his brightest fun, 
his tenderest passion, his deepest pathos, and his 
noblest eloquence, all found expression in that ver- 
nacular, that speech of the people, which was the 
birthright of every Scotchman, however lowly born. 

Now Barns could have received no education 
that would have given him a mightier command of 
this tongue — to him at once a harp and a sword. 
Perfect knowledge of his subject, perfect sympathy 
with his audience, perfect mastery of his instrument 
— and for not one of these gifts or acquirements was 

116 



lie indebted to any school or university. But let us 
not make the common and silly mistake of calling him 
uneducated. He was well educated, thoroughly edu- 
cated, for the great place he was to nil. No other 
training would have answered. The mills have been 
running in Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge for 
centuries. Whj^ haven't they turned out a few 
Burnses ? They have given us many a man of learn- 
ing, they have polished and adorned many a man of 
genius, but they have never given us a single poet of 
the people. There is only one school that can produce 
him, and that is the school of hardship, privation and 
daily toil that Burns attended. 

He had one gift generally considered to be rare 
among poets, but of priceless value any^.vhere. I 
mean great, rugged, common sense. "With all his 
fooling, bantering and dreaming, he never over- 
stepped this bound. You can point out many things 
that are coarse, that ought never to have been Avritten ; 
but you cannot lay your finger on a single line and 
say, it is silly. There is that substratum of good 
sense under everything he T\TOte. This cannot be 
said of all poets, nor, indeed, of all great poets. 
"Wordsworth wrote mucl^that is good, and a little 
that can never die. Manj^ who judge wisely in such 
matters rank him third among English poets — 
Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth — but Wordsworth 
cannot bear this test. "When he was proposed for 
Poet Laureate, a member of parliament recited some 
of the weakest of his writings, and then asked, amid 
the jeers and sneers of the House, whether a man 
who could be guilty of such stuff as that was fit to 
be the Laureate of England! He could never have 

117 



done that with Burns. We may laugh ivitk Burns, 
we never laugh at him. You might strip him of all 
his poetic gift, and still have left a man of ability and 
brains. 

He had likewise the gift of leadership, of 
magnetism, of eloquence. Women loved him at sight ; 
children hung about his knees ; and men followed him 
like children. When it was kno^vn that he was at 
the tavern, farmers forsook the fields, work in the 
village was laid aside, and if he would talk the crowd 
would hang upon his lips till morning. And it was 
not the peasantry alone who admired him. Men and 
women of the best birth and breeding in Edinburgh 
testified that his conversation was even more wonder- 
ful than his poetry. This awkward ploughman was 
transformed in the presence of beauty. He could 
greet a lady wdth the grace of a knight. "Sic an e'e 
in his head ! ' ' was a common exclamation among those 
who saw him. His countenance beamed with intelli- 
gence and his smile was as winning as a child's. Who 
wonders that women loved him! Over his rugged 
and manly strength was thrown the charm of wit, 
the grace of speech, and that indefinable suggestion 
of greatness. Here was that rare blending of sweet- 
ness and strength which captivates the heart and 
leads men where it will. 

Sir Walter Scott, when he was a boy, met Bums 
one day in Edinburgh. They were showing the poet 
a picture. There were some lines of verse beneath it. 
The picture touched Burns deeply and he inquired 
who wrote the lines. No one present could answer, 
until the shy boy ventured to whisper the author's 
name. Scott said he could never forget the eyes 

118 



Burns turned upon him, eyes ''the most glorious he 
ever saw," as he said, "My boy, it is no coimnon 
course of reading that has taught you this." How 
impressive and suggestive a meeting! Neither knew 
the other's greatness, nor indeed his own. Neitlier 
could guess how their names would be linked together 
forever in the world's memory and love. 

Thomas Carlyle, himself one of Scotland's 
greatest, who studied Burns \vell and wrote the 
noblest prose tribute that has ever been laid upon his 
grave, declared that if Burns 's fortune had led him 
into parliament he would have proved a greater Mira- 
beau. There is no doubt that he was an uncrowned 
king, a born leader of men. 

But over and above all this he bore the rare, 
mysterious, magnificent endowment of poetic genius. 
This was his crown. Here the aspiring nature burst 
into flame. The rarest and most splendid gift God 
ever bestows upon the world is a great poet. Wlien 
Burns was born that winter day in the old clay big- 
ging that his father built, his coming was unheralded 
by sign or prophecy — no angels are singing in the 
fields, no "star-led wizards haste with odors sweet," 
— yet if the world had ever had the wit to welcome 
its richest blessings, it might have knelt there in 
reverence and awe. Scotland would never be the 
same again. The earth itself would never seem the 
same, but love would be more sweet, and home more 
precious, and toil less hard, manhood would be more 
free and sacred, and life itself a richer, happier 
thing, because of the wee bit bairn that saw the light 
that day. 

We see now that it was Nature's purpose to 

119 



make a poet, and that she took the surest means. She 
took the best blood of Scotland, peasant blood pure 
and undefiled, that had flowed for hundreds of years 
close to the kindly earth, — gave him a father of 
mature and hardened manhood, a young mother with 
a glad, warm heart — a father of rigid virtue, ardent 
piety, but independent spirit and almost ungovern- 
able temper, — a mother of poetic soul, responsive to 
every appeal of beauty, and so smitten with the love 
of song that she went about her work crooning the 
old Scotch airs, day after day, while bearing her baby 
in the womb. ''When a man is born,'' said Emerson, 
* ' the gate of gifts is shut behind him. ' ' Why, Nature 
had made sure that Burns should be a poet before 
ever he was born. 

Yes, and having made sure of that, she knew 
better than to let him be born in any place less poetic 
than a bigging — and a clay one at that. She even saw 
to it that the gable should fall down, and let a ''blast 
o' Janwar' win' blow hansel in on Robin." It was 
the only way. How should a man be the poet of the 
poor and not be poor himself? Tradition says that 
Burns's father, riding in haste that morning for the 
doctor, met at the river side an old woman who went 
back with him to the cottage and acted as midwife. 
This was the fortune-teller who figures in the song 
sung today at the unveiling of the statue : 

The gossip keekit in his loof. 
Quo' she, wha lives will see the proof. 
This waly hoy will be nae coof, 
I think we'll ca' him Robin. 



120 



He'll hae misfortunes great an' sma*, 
But aye a heart aboon them, a'; 
He'll be a credit till us a' 

We'll a' be proud o' Robin. 

Was not this the same old woman who taught 
him afterwards the folk-lore of the countryside, 
filling his young imagination with elves and ghaists 
and witches and warlocks, and all the rest of the un- 
earthly crew? At this distance she seems not unlike 
the Scottish Muse herself; and had Burns been born 
in legendary times, who doubts that the gossip his 
father met so opportunely on the river bank would 
have turned out to be the goddess, indeed, traveling 
in disguise to minister at the birth of her favorite 
son? 

Fate not only saw to it that he should be born 
poor ; she kept him poor. What a pathetic life it was ! 
Over him through boyhood and youth hung the heaw 
cloud of his genius — the brooding and melancholy 
mind — ^not quick, gay, light-hearted like his brother 
Gilbert — rather slow, rather dull, wearing on his face 
a look of sadness or of pain. Out of that same cloud 
the lightnings of fancy and humor were to flash and 
play, and the thunder-voice of heroic language was 
to roll. Meanwhile he was staggering under the 
weight of self-knowledge. He sat alone, he walked 
apart, he murmured to himself, and felt the dawnings 
of that mighty wit that is "to madness near allied." 
The world that others saw Avas not his world. He 
lived in that ideal realm which his reading, his reflec- 
tion, the songs and tales that fell from the lips of his 
mother or the granny, had conjured up around him. 
He was a poet. 

121 



His father was determined that his boys should 
be well taught. And when a Scotchman is determined 
it is time for fate to yield. To this end he sacrificed 
everything. He would not send them out to work, 
however much he needed "the sair-won penny-fee." 
He kept them at home and taught them all he knew — 
taught them out of his scanty book-lore, out of the 
richer wisdom of life's experience, and the priceless 
store of moral and spiritual truth. Then he paid, out 
of his hard toil, the best teacher he could find, that 
they might have the learning he had never known. 
In all biography there is no more touching 
example of parental care and sacrifice than that of 
"William Burns. He died before his son arrived at 
fame, but he lives forever in The Cotter's Saturday 
Night : 

The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, 

The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride: 

His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, 

****** 

And "Let us worship God!" he says, with solemn air. 
****** 

The priest-like father reads the sacred page, 

****** 

Then kneeling down, to Heaven's Eternal King, 

The saint, the father, and the husband prays: 

Hope springs exulting on triumphant wing, 

That thus they all shall meet in future days: 

****** 

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs. 
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad. 
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 
*'An honest man's the noblest work of Grod!" 

In rugged grandeur of character, self-denial, 
obedience to duty, brave, patient, suffering, majestic 

122 



manhood, William Burns towers above his wayward 
and gifted son as much as that son himself towers in 
greatness of intellect above the common people around 
him. Oh, Robert ! Robert ! if you had only had your 
father's character — his unbending will, his flawless 
rectitude — set as the eternal hills for what he saw 
was right — we should not shed today the bitter tear 
of shame and disappointment over you, even in the 
hour of gratitude and glory. For there is something 
sweeter than song, more enchanting than the poetic 
vision, more admirable than the richest gifts of 
thought and speech that can be lavished on the child 
of man. It is character — it is self-denial — it is self 
restraint — not passion but patience — love that will 
not seek its own, but can suffer and be strong — 
justice that will not waver though the heavens should 
fall ! 

Burns did inherit much from his father. From 
him he took his proud and independent spirit, his 
temper, hard to curb, his stern integrity, his vigorous 
understanding, his penetrating judgment of men, and 
we know not how mtuch of those volcanic physical 
passions that made the upheaval and wreck of his 
life. From his mother he took his milder and gentler 
gifts, — the dreamy mood — every sense an avenue for 
the approach of beauty — a heart for laughter and 
for tears. It was a wonderful comingling. Yes, it 
was that rare, miraculous, perilous mixture, a man 
of genius. And this marvellously, delicately endowed 
mortal, what does fate do with him? Why, she makes 
him a ploughboy, of course. If there had been any 
occupation more common, more humble, more of the 
earth earthy, doubtless she would have made him 

123 



that. For this man was born to be the interpreter of 
beauty to the humblest; and the mingling of qualities 
that went to make his soul was not more remarkable 
than the circumstances that were to mold his life, that 
were to waken and disappoint his powers, to warm 
and chill his heart, to make him feel the whole pathos 
of human fate, to suffer and sing and triumph and 
fall and perish — and then to live in the splendor of 
immortal youth. No poet was ever made without 
suffering. The birth of song, like the birth of man 
himself, is a birth of agony. Every gift enters by the 
gate of pain. How well Burns knew! 

The real trouble for Burns began when he was 
old enough to fall in love. Some men never reach this 
age. Some reach it very early and never get by it: 
and that was the case with Burns. It seems they 
had a custom of giving to each lad in harvest work 
a lassie for a partner. A thrifty Scotch notion, that ! 
They knew well enough how the lad's pride would 
make him work. "Will anything make a boy or man 
work like the admiration of a woman — especially if 
it be the woman? Well, that is the way it began 
with Robert. He had ' ' a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lassie* ' 
for a partner, and of course he made her a sang. 
He could do it while he worked. That is where he 
did most of his singing. One day he was stooking 
grain in friendly rivalry with a neighbor lad. ''I'm 
even with you today, Rob," said his comrade at 
night. ''Na, na," he answered, ''For I made a sang 
while I stookit." He was overworked in youth, and 
carried to his grave in face and figure the traces of 
that toil. When the writing-master came to thr 
village, Robert went one week and Gilbert next— 

124 



for they could not aiford to pay two fees, nor could 
the farm spare both the boys at once. 

He was always in love. I never counted up tUe 
number of those to whom his love poems are addressed. 
Some, no doubt, were verses of compliment, but not 
many. It is easy to tell which. 

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever; 

Ae farewell, alas, forever! 

********* 

,Had we never loved sae kindly, 
Had we never loved sae blindly, 
Kever met — or never parted. 
We had ne'er been broken-hearted. 

Men do not write such verses as those for the 
sake of politeness. They come out of the depths. Of 
the divine passion of love it was wisely written, "All 
other pleasures are not worth its pains." Bums 
put the poignant truth into one peerless stanza: 
Although thou maun never be mine, 

Although even hope is denied, 
'Tis sweeter for thee despairing 
Than aught in the world beside. 

I shall not repeat the sad story of his failings. 
You know it all; how he sat on the penitent's stool 
for "sonsie, smirking,, dear-bought Bess" — ^how 
bonnie Jean was brought to sorrow for his sake 
— how he would have given her all that he could then 
give, his name, but her father spurned the offer and 
dealt his pride the deepest wound he ever felt — how, 
afterwards, when prosperity and fame had come, and 
Jean came to his home, he failed to keep the happy 
resolve of his song : 

I ha'e a wife of my ane, 

I'll care for naebody. 

125 



No flowers of verse, not even those that he could 
scatter, could make his wayward and disloyal course 
beautiful. But in the heaven of his dark and cloudy 
life one love shines like a star — his Highland Mary. 
He found her at a time when every tie that had 
bound him to others seemed to have been broken, 
without his fault or against his will. Jean herself 
appeared to have forsaken him. He had won a little 
fame and gold by the publication of his poems, and 
was almost ready to cross the sea in search of a 
happier future. It was then they met and loved, 
when both were young and free and full of hope, and 
life seemed all before them. He loved her with an 
intensity of pure devotion before which all the other 
passions of his life turn pale ; and she gave him back 
the unspeakable wealth of her maiden heart, sweet 
as a flower and pure as the dew of the morning. Fol- 
lowing the beautiful superstition of the country' folk, 
they stood, one on each side of a little mountain 
brook, holding the Bible between them, to add a sanc- 
tity to their vows, and pledged themselves eternally 
to one another. It is the purest, sweetest, saddest 
passage in the poet's history. Death claimed his 
Mary — he never saw her again — but he never forgot 
that hour ! 

Ye banks, and braes, and streams around 

The castle o' Montgomery, 

Green be your woods, and fair your flowers. 
Your waters never drumlie! 

There simmer first unfauld her robes, 
And there the langest tarry! 

For there t took the last fareweel 
O' my sweet Highland Mary. 

The return of that day was always sacred: 
126 



Thou lingering star, with lessening ray, 
That lov'st to greet the early morn. 

Again thou us'herest in the day 

My Mary from my soui was torn. 

That sacred hour can I forget? 

Can I forget the hallowed grove, 
Where by the winding Ayr we met. 

To live one day of parting love? 

Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes, 
And fondly broods with miser care! 

Time but the impression stronger makes, 
As streams their channels deeper wear. 

Ah, this was the real Burns, for this was Burns at 
his best — and this is the Burns that will live in the 
world's regard — not the libertine, but the lover of 
Highland Mary. 

Who knows what his life might have been under 
happier stars? He died at thirty-seven. Perhaps 
if he had lived the manly strength of his nature 
would have seized the reins at last. Perhaps he might 
have fulfilled his own witty prophecy in his Address 
to the Deil: 

And now, Auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin', 

A certain bardie's rantin', drinkin', 

Somt luckless hour will send him, linkin'. 

To your black pit; 
But, faith, he'll turn a corner, jinkin'. 

And cheat you yet. 

It is hard to think of one as lost whose heart 
acknowledges a touch of pity for the devil himself : 

But fare you weel, Auld Nickie-ben! 
Oh, wad ye tak' a thought an' men'! 
Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — 

127 



still hae a stake — 
I'm wae to think upo' yon den 
Ev'n for your sake! 

No doubt drink played a large part in his un- 
doing. A better inscription for a punch-bowl than 
any Burns ever wrote are those lines of the Japanese 
adage : 

First the man takes a drink — 
Then the drink takes a drink — 
Then the drink takes the man. 

And yet with all his sprees he cannot have been 
the sot he is sometimes pictured. The work he left 
behind him vindicates him from that charge. All his 
life he worked hard with his hands — hard as the toil- 
ing men about him, and yet he left a mass of writings 
that were enough to have filled his days had he done 
nothing else. Surely we have no right to forget that 
he lived in a time when drinking was a universal 
custom, and when drunkenness itself was not frowned 
upon as it is today. Law had thrown no guards 
around the weak — temptation was on every side, and 
public sentiment had not learned to look upon the 
habit as the destroyer of men's peace. But neither 
must we forget that one of the gravest counts in that 
terrible indictment against drink that the sure and 
solemn years are framing, is the early and tragic 
death of Robert Burns. 

That he was really made of manly stuff is plain 
from the way in which he bore his popularity. When 
the publication of his poems brought him fame and 
took him to Edinburgh, his head was not turned. He 
met it gladly, but gravely, unafraid and unfooled. He 
foresaw that the tide of interest in him would turn 

128 



and ebb, and that he would go back to the plough. 
He never ducked or bowed low, never in any presence 
concealed his opinions, but spoke out at the great 
man's table as he did at the Mauchline tavern. And 
when he returned to the farm, it was not in the spirit 
of wounded, disappointed vanity, but with a hearty 
preference for the country life. He had one burning 
ambition, and that was, to be a bard worthy of Scot- 
land. He died and never knew how splendidly he 
had succeeded. Oh, if he could only have knowTi! It 
is the old lamentation. If Shakespeare could only 
have known! If Columbus could only have knowTi! 
"One soweth and another reapeth." 

His last years looked terribly like failure. The 
Government made him an exciseman, — a small salary 
and very hard work. His fame brought him visitors, 
who ate up his substance and wasted his time. He 
would not turn his poetic faculty into gold, and so 
he grew discouraged and drank hard, until he was 
shunned by the friends of other days, and finally, 
when a gay party was going on in Dumfries, an 
acquaintance met him in the shadow, on the deserted 
side of the street, and Burns quoted to him the Avords 
of the old ballad: 

His bonnet stood ance fu' fair on his brow, 

His old ane looked better than mony ane's new; 

But now he lets wear ony way it will hing; 

And casts himself dowie upon the corn bing. 

What did this unhappy man leave "us? To 
speak only of supreme excellence, he left us the best 
satire in the language — Holy Willie's Prayer; the 
best tale in verse — Tam O'Shanter; the best descrip- 
tion of Scottish life and character — The Cotter's Sat- 

129 



urday Night; the best drinking song — Auld Lang 
Syne; the best battle ode — Bannockburn; and the 
best love songs, perhaps, in any language. This was 
the man who toiled like a day-laborer all his life, 
owed nothing to the schools, and died at thirty-seven. 
Thank God, it is not for us to judge ; it is for us only 
to be grateful. 

Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentler sister woman; 
Though they may gang a kennin' wrang, 

To step aside is human: 
One point must still be greatly dark, 

The moving why they do it: 
And just as lamely can ye mark 
How far perhaps they rue it. 

"What is our debt to Bums? Not merely the 
verse he left us, although that debt is great indeed. 
He redeemed common life from its vulgarity. He 
dignified labor; he made home sweeter, and love more 
precious, and threw over this workaday world an im- 
m/ortal charm. Burns stands for that spirit of manly 
independence which was the very breath of life in the 
nostrils of the New World. He was the great demo- 
crat of Europe. He walked the strait paths of that 
feudal land in the spirit of the new age — absolutely 
free — and hailed afar the coming of a brighter day. 
He felt the terrible inequalities of the human lot: 

Not but I hae a richer share 

Than mony ithers, 
But why should one man better fare 

And all men brithers? 

This is the question that staggers us today, and 
will continue to trouble every noble and tender heart, 
until the great levelling processes of liberty shall have 

130 



done their perfect work. He taught us the true value 
of manhood: 

Is. there for honest poverty, 

That hangs his head, and a' that? 
The coward slave, we pass him by, 

We dare be poor for a' that! 
For a' that, and a' that, 

Our toils obscure and a' that; 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp. 

The man's the gowd lor a' that. 

He has imparted to us his own serene faith in the 
coming of the better time: 

Then let us pray that come it may — 

As come it will for a' that — 
That sense and worth o'er a' the earth, 

May bear the gree, and a' that; 
For a' that, and a' that. 

It's comin' yet, for a' that, 
That man to man, the warld o'er. 

Shall brothers be for a' that! 

If, somewhere in the other world, that unseen 
land which may be nearer than we think, this great 
soul is looking down upon our doings here today, 
believe me, nothing in it all has touched him more than 
that his form was wrapped about in the stars and 
stripes, the glorious ensign of the young republic he 
welcomed and saluted from across the sea ! 

You, men of his own race, who cherish his fame, 
and out of the love and sacrifice of loyal hearts have 
reared this monument to his memory — you shall be 
better Americans for being true Scotchmen. You have 
cast in your lot with us, in a land dedicated to the 
very principle for which Burns sang his earnest song. 
We have a great task before us still, and you must 

131 



help us. We must see that the sublime ideal of our 
fathers is realized better, year by year, in a wide and 
wider spread of those blessings of liberty which they 
intended to secure for themselves and their posterity. 
The stream of national life must be the richer for your 
coming. Bring us of your thrift, your energy, your 
loyalty; we need them all. But bring us your finer 
gift, bring us your poet, too. lie is too great for 
Scotland — ^he belongs to the world at large. We will 
teach our children to stand before his statue and say 
with yours: This is Robert Burns, the great peasant 
ploughman — ^the most rarely gifted son of the Scot- 
tish race — the sweetest singer of the common joys and 
sorrows of mankind the world has ever heard. 



132 



LAKE CHAMPLAIN IN HISTORY. 

An Address delivered at Isle La Motte, July 9, 1909; at 

the Tercentenary Celebration of the Discovery 

of Lake Champlain. 

Your Excellencies, Fellow Citizens and Friends : 
When I was in Buffalo last winter Senator Hill 
took me to see the home of the Historical Society. It 
stands at the old crossing of the Indian trails. Over 
one of its arches runs a legend in the dialect of the 
Senecas: Neh-Ko, Ga-Gis-Dah-Yen-Duk — Other coun- 
cil-fires were here before ours. I was thinking of that 
legend as I sat here today and thinking how few were 
the places over all the earth where some such words 
might not with truth be written, if we could only 
know all that has gone before; for 

"All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom." 

But such thoughts are overpowering. They make 
the life of man seem insignificant. Let us turn at 
once to more congenial themes. 

Sixteen Hundred and Nine is a year well worth 
remembering even without the reason that has brought 
us here. That was the year when Kepler gave the 
world The New Astronomy with the first and second 
of his three great laws. Galileo was constructing his 
telescope, with which, a few months later, he dis- 
covered the satellites of Jupiter. Hendrick Hudson 

133 



was sailing up the noble river tliat was ever after- 
ward to bear his name. Two years before, the London 
Co. had planted Jamestown. It was only six years 
from the death of Queen Elizabeth. It was only a 
year to the death of Henry of Navarre. The world 
was ringing mth great names and great achievements. 
The soul of man was putting out its wings. 

When Champlain passed the place where we now 
stand, he was 42 years old, — at the prime of life, in 
the full flower of his strength. For a dozen years 
he had followed the sea, as his father had done before 
him. He had been born in one of its ports on the 
shore of France. He had seen Spain and Mexico, 
Panama and the West Indies. He had crossed and 
re-crossed the Atlantic. He had cruised and mapped 
the New England coast, sailed up the broad St. 
Lawrence, and only the year before had laid the 
foundations of Quebec. Much lay behind him but at 
least as much before. He was yet to make many 
voyages, to explore the Ottawa, to discover two of the 
Great Lakes — Ontario and Huron — and to stand in 
the place of his King as Governor of Canada. He be • 
longed to that great breed of men the age brought 
forth abundantly, — a scholar and a soldier. He knew 
how to act as well as think; he could fight as well 
as pray. He had courage to push out into the wilder- 
ness, and science to make clear his course, and 
languag'e to record for after times what he had 
seen and done, — a hand firm on the tiller of state, a 
heart devoted to the cross. It would be hard to find a 
better type of the France of his day, — able, ambitious, 
devout, — grasping for King and church at the best 
the new world had to offer. 

134 



He had a Frenchman's love of beauty and these 
lovely islands took his eye. AYe \nll not doubt today 
that he stopped here. How could he have passed by 
this emerald gem set in the sapphire sea ? Low islands 
he says he saw, beautiful ANith meadows and the 
noblest trees, ranged over b}^ the fawn and stag and 
fallow-deer. His words are no riddles to us. These 
are the very islands that he saw, and they charm our 
eyes today as they did his 300 years ago. The guides 
told him they had once been inhabited by Indians but 
the merciless wars that raged between the northern 
and the southern tribes had driven them away. They 
lay upon the war path, right in the track of carnage. 
Caniaderigarunte the natives called it — the gateway. 
It was indeed the very gate through which the tides 
of ancient Indian battle ebbed and flowed, — the fairest 
spot on earth, almost, and yet the most exposed and 
perilous. The coming of the white man was not the 
coming of peace but rather the coming of more deadly 
war. Here, where the red man's council fires had 
burned, the white man's fort was built, — the first 
TN^thin the boundaries that embrace Vermont, and, in 
the shelter of the fort, the earliest Christian chapel. 
In 1665 or '66 the fort was built by Captain De La 
Motte and the first mass was said. That is the simple 
story, but think how much it means. The pale-face 
did bring war, war tliat was to sweep native races to 
their doom, war, even T\ith his own kind, ruthless and 
insatiable. But he brought with him also the holy, 
blessed truths that will yet overcome all hearts and 
make all war impossible. Fort St. Anne was burned 
by the French themselves but five years later. It was 
only a halting hesitating step, a foot thrust out into 

135 



the wild and then withdrawn; yet it marked the be- 
ginning of a movement in this valley that was to be 
continued for a century, — a determined but unsuc- 
cessful effort to plant the banner of the fleur-de-lis 
in the very heart of New England. Here the two 
proudest nations of the old world were to have their 
final grapple for the fairest portion of the new. As 
it had been before the white man came so was it still 
to be, — the valley of beauty was the highway of war. 
The basin of the St. Lawrence was peopled by the 
French. The coast of the Atlantic from Cape Breton 
to the south was peopled by their hated rivals. That 
was enough. Here ran the unpeopled passage-way 
between the two, and for a hundred years none but a 
fool would have built a home beyond the shelter of 
a fort in all these fertile acres. Swanton had a half- 
breed settlement, perhaps, from 1700 to 1760. Over 
there on Windmill Point in Alburg, in 1780, the 
French tried hard to keep a foothold, but it was soon 
abandoned. The same year or the next they began 
their southern Gibraltar at Crown Point in Fort St. 
Frederick; and there and at Chimney Point on the 
eastern shore, a musket-shot away, a little French vil- 
lage sprang up and flourished for 25 or 30 years. But 
that is all the tale. The rest is the story of fortifica- 
tions built, abandoned or destroyed, rebuilt, retaken 
or given to the flames, — like old Fort Carillon that 
afterwards became Ticonderoga. 

In 1757 the greatest man in England took the 
reins and in two years the French dream of North 
American dominion had dissolved. William Pitt was 
master. Quebec was taken. Crown Point and Ticon- 
deroga were in English hands, and the red horrors 

136 



of 150 years were to be thenceforward but a thrilling 
fireside tale. 

The legends of that ghastly time lie all around 
us; and memories of the later wars that swept the 
lake are thick as leaves of summer and colored like 
the leaves of autumn with glory and romance. We 
have only to reach out our hands to take them. For 
seven days now the conjurer's wand has been waved 
over this lovely valley calling the dead to life. We 
have gone through the wicket gate of old Fort Ti step 
for step T^dtli Allen. We have seen Arnold, still wear- 
ing the rose of his loyalty uncankered bj^ the worm 
of treason. We have fought ^^dth him his desperate 
fight at Valcour and leaped mth him from his flaming 
bowsprit at Panton. We have watched the British 
fleet weigh anchor off this shore and move southward 
to its doom at the hands of the invincible Macdon- 
ough. Memorial and procession, speech and song and 
pageant have taken up the threads of ancient, half- 
forgotten life, and made the glowing pattern live 
anew. Again we see the plumed and painted savage 
on the trail, the settler working mth his flint-lock in 
the hollow of his arm, the highlander in his plaid, 
the hireling Hessian in his scarlet coat, the colonist in 
his deer skin or his buff and blue, the French and 
British regulars who wear upon their breasts the 
trophies of world-famous battles over-sea. And as we 
look we seem to see the gathering of the nations, not 
now for war but for the beginning of a new era under 
happier skies. 

Three hundred years. It sounds like eternity 
in the ears of a child. And yet four mortal lives, and 
those not very long, might compass it. There must be 

137 



many living in the world today whose great-grand- 
fathers could have remembered 1609. In the long 
march of the world's progress it is less than a watch 
in the night. There have been periods of three hun- 
dred years that signified nothing in the life of man. 
They came and went like waves upon the beach, 
leaving no mark behind them. But the three hundred 
years that lies behind us in our thought today has 
filled the earth with marvels. Even the physical as- 
pect of the earth has been transformed. In 1609 the 
Western Hemisphere was scarcely pricked by the ex- 
plorer, and see it now! Africa was a desert and a 
jungle. It is swarming now with eager nations. Asia 
was a mystery and a dream, a fabulous, enchanted 
palace whose gold and ivory portals western feet wer(3 
not to pass. Its doors are open now and east and 
west are mingling. Three centuries ago the Pacific 
was a sail-less sea. Now on its opposing shores the 
eastern and western worlds stand face to face and 
the struggles and rivalries of the coming age will be 
upon its bosom. Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia, 
the Central and South American Republics — what 
were these? They were not even names three cen- 
turies ago. Even Europe, that has sent her millions 
to all quarters of the globe, has, herself, increased 
enormously in numbers. In the 19tli century alone 
her population more than doubled. 

We seem standing in the presence of a miracle. 
And yet all these changes are as nothing to the 
changes that have come to pass in the life of man 
through the discoveries of science. Modern science — 
practical modern science — began with Francis Bacon, 
and he did not publish his Novum Organum until 

138 



1620 — less than three centuries a^o. He taught men 
to invent by teaching them how to study nature, and 
died in consequence of an experiment. Following 
the path he pointed out and turning their backs on 
the barren speculation of the ancients, men have made 
existence on this planet a comfort and a joy to 
millions where it was once a gift hardly to be ac- 
cepted. For it is not merely that we make a thousand 
miles today as quickly and more easily than our 
ancestors could make ten or twenty. It is not that 
we speak with each other across continents, and flash 
our thought and feeling under the deep sea, or make 
the waves of air bear messages from one world to the 
other. It is not that the wealth of the east is brought 
to the door of the west and the product of the west is 
poured out upon the threshold of the east. This is 
not the true and solid ground for our rejoicing; but 
that by all these means and many others the life of 
common men upon the globe has been made some- 
thing better. The fat years now are able to help out 
the lean. India in her famine may now be fed by 
Kansas in her plenty. Earthshaken Sicily may 
perhaps find hope and succor in a battleship that 
flies the stars and stripes. Multitudes, not here and 
there a solitary man, may feel the broadening in- 
fluence of travel. All may know what all the rest 
are doing. And that means confidence. It means 
the end of ignorant mistrust and fear and so it 
means the end of half the cause of war. Once all 
peoples were strangers to each other, and stranger 
was another name for enemy. And so it is that all 
the rest science has done for men is almost nothing 
to the blessing it has brought about in this, that we 

139 



are nearer to a world-wide union, to that happy time 
the noble hearted Burns foretold ' ' when man to man 
the world o'er shall brothers be for a' that." 

Then see how the forms of government have 
changed since Champlain visited this island. Feud- 
alism was indeed already doomed. It was singing 
its swan song by the lips of Shakespeare. A new 
spirit had passed over Europe. It was to take genera- 
tions to throw off the yoke. It is not yet thrown off 
entirely. But there was not a single free government 
in the world three hundred years ago. There was 
not a single nation that recognized the obvious fact 
that I have no more right to govern you than you 
have to govern me, — that every one who is expected 
to obey the law has a right to be heard in saying 
what that law shall be. I say there was not a single 
state in the world 300 years ago that had the sense 
or justice to admit that simple truth — not even 
with respect to its men, to say nothing of its women. 
Now we have advanced so far that many governments 
do admit in theory or in practice that their just powers 
are derived entirely from the governed. Wiiat a 
gain is that ! A year before the date we are observ- 
ing John Milton was born in London. His life spans 
the English Revolution, the highest achievement, the 
crowning glory of the English race. A century later 
came our own brave struggle for independence. And 
that was not at bottom a struggle between Great 
Britain and the colonies, but a grapple Detween Whig 
and Tory, a conflict that was going on on both sides 
of the Atlantic. Then came the French Revolution 
freeing France, and Europe, too, from the intolerable 
tyranny of the past, and destined to open the prison 

140 



door for every people. And the French Revolution 
was in large part a consequence of our own. Look 
about the world today. See how the principles of 
free government, encouraged by their success upon 
this continent, are shaking every throne upon the 
globe. Look at Russia travailing in the throes of her 
new birth of freedom. See Young Turkey on the 
shores of the Bosporus making good its claim to 
constitutional government. See Persia awaking from 
her revery and old China turning from the slumber 
of four thousand years. We marvel at the changes 
that have come to pass in the appearance of the 
earth since 1609. We marvel still more at the changes 
in the life of man through the wizardry of science. 
But here is a marvel that cheapens both of these, — 
the coming of the common man into his own. The 
reign of the common people has begun. The fact 
of deepest import in this wonderful era is not Dis- 
covery nor Developement, no, not even Science. It 
is Democracy, — man shaking off the fetters that have 
bound him in all ages and standing erect and free 
as God would have him stand. Really that is ali 
there is. The mere increase of numbers, the ifiere 
spreading of mankind through distant lands, that 
is, in itself, no rational ground for our rejoicing. 
Even the revelations of science would not justify our 
joy if they meant nothing more than a new might 
in the hands of the old masters. What we exult in 
is the tremendous fact that now for the first time 
in the history of the world the whole race moves 
together. Intelligence is so diffused and freedom is 
so general that every addition to knowledge or to 
power is an addition to a common store and all men 

141 



are made richer. That was not so in other times. 
There was great learning then, but it was kept in 
some close cult, like that of the priests in Egypt. 
There was transcendent art but it was for the few, 
not for the many. Nero held the supreme artist of 
his age a prisoner for life to decorate his private 
palace, the famous House of Gold. Science was 
carried far in individual cases. The chemist and 
artisan of the ancient day wrought miracles whose 
secret modern times have not discovered. But their 
skill and cunning perished with them for it was not, 
as ours is, the possession of the race. The art and 
learning of the antique world, except, perhaps, the 
learning and the art of Greece, carried the seeds 
of decay in its own bosom in this very fact, that it 
did not trust the people — it did not give itself unto 
the world. Our art and science does, and so it lives 
and grows and ever will. For the way to call the 
heaven-born genius forth is to give the opportunity 
of culture and enlightenment to all. Educate the 
millions, and while you are making of the millions 
better men and safer citizens, you are making sure 
of that half dozen really master minds among them 
whose contributions to the common stock of the 
world's power and knowledge will recompense a 
hundred fold the outlay you have lavished upon all. 
Edison was a poor, uncultivated boy; yet he found 
his opportunity because he lived in a time and land 
where opportunity is universal. What is the chance 
that he would have come to light in the middle 
ages? Look at Orville and Wilbur Wright leading 
the world to the dominion of the air. Quiet, obscure 
men — they would have gone unnoticed to their graves 

142 



if it had not been for freedom and the common school. 
These are the returning harvest of the seed our fathers 
sowed. Trust the people, make education common 
as the street, and you shall reap your reward in the 
steamboat and the telegraph, in Eiiiiersons and 
Lincolns, in Marconi and St. Gaudens. 

We cannot claim that in the realm of art, letters 
and philosophy we have outstript the past. Lest 
we should wax too proud it may be well to acknowledge 
here and now that the masterpieces of poetry, paint- 
ing and sculpture, the deepest broodings of the human 
spirit over the riddles of destiny, are still to be looked 
for back of 1609. But there never was before so 
wide a knowledge of the truth, such capacity for the 
appreciation of the beautiful in the world at large, 
so vast and fit an audience for the poet and the seer. 
And if the product of the last three centuries has 
not put the past to shame it has been noble and in- 
spiring, and filled to overflowing with a love of man 
that is worth all the selfish splendors of the past. 
No great writer any longer sneers, as even Shake- 
speare sometimes did, at the man below him. There 
is no longer any poetry in that. The world-poeia 
bears the title of the Son of Man. 

And so we have come back in the end to the 
point that we set out from, to the chapel and the mass. 
For it is not clearer to our eyes that summer follows 
spring than that the beneficent changes we have traced 
today with gratitude and joy have followed from 
the teachings of the Man of Galilee. It was He who 
taught us the divinity of man — all the rest flows from 
that — the unsuspected majesty of human nature. 
That is why man may not be enslaved. That is 

143 



why he shall not be left forever in ignorance or 
poverty or shame. We come back at last, through the 
things that are ever changing, to the things that 
never change. It is as though we had been sitting 
here in the shadow of the old fort and listening to 
the chanting of the priests in that first Christian 
service — and then there had broken in upon the music 
the rattle of muskets, the yell of the savage, the 
scream of the victim, the shouting of seamen, the 
thunder of cannon, the noise of the tempest, the pipes 
of the clansmen, the song of the pioneer, the long, 
reverbera^ting whistle of the steamer, the rumble 
and roar of the approaching train, the hum of industry 
through all the valley, the Babel of multitudes that 
come and go — and then again silence had fallen, and 
we heard the sweet and solemn chant still going on, 
and caught the words, ^'Deposuit potentes de sede et 
exalt avit Inimiles/' Ah yes! He has put down the 
mighty from their seat and has exalted them of low 
degree. After all, that is the only reality — the rest 
is all a dream. 



144 



THOMAS BARTLETT: AN OLD-TIME 
ADVOCATE. 

An article published in the Green Bag, February 1896. 

The fame of a unique advocate lingers among the 
fading traditions of the Vermont Bar. Through all 
this country-side, where he was known, Thomas 
Bartlett is still ''a name to conjure with." 

He was born June 18, 1808, studied law with 
Isaac Fletcher in Lyndon, Vermont, practised in this 
section for forty years or so, was sent to Congress in 
1851, and died September 12, 1876. Meagre as this 
statement is, it will be enough for our purpose. Even 
these dates will have no interest for most of those 
who read these pages. If anything about him can 
hold their attention it will be a delineation of the 
orator himself. And a remiarkable orator he certainly 
was. Deficient in early education, with many and 
gross faults of style when judged by the purest 
standards, there is yet no doubt that, as a jury advo- 
cate, he spoke at all times effectively, and often witn 
genuine eloquence and power. He had precisely the 
make-up of an orator. Large-hearted, generous, sensi- 
tive, sympathetic, impulsive, woman-like in tender- 
ness, leonine in anger — laughter and tears alike at his 
command, and as for language — well, he had kissed 
the blarney stone. Witli happier fortune, with 
severer training, with firmer self-control, he might 
have been, unless all reports about him are false, 

145 



among the greatest orators that ever spoke. In the 
first place he had those physical advantages which 
Wendell Phillips used to say, in speaking of O'Con- 
nell, are "half the battle." Of royal height, (six 
feet four, I think), nobly proportioned, with grave 
and striking features, with a halting step and a palsied 
arm, infirmities v/hich, as he managed them, really 
increased the impressiveness of his bearing, — he had 
only to '^ address himself to motion like as he would 
speak" to find his audience half won already in 
interest and sympathy. And then, when he did speak, 
a voice of unsurpassed strength, depth and richness 
did the rest. Fluent to a fault, almost, yet carefully 
discriminating in the choice of words, he poured be- 
fore his hearers, often unlettered though they Avere, 
his wealth of diction, imagery, allusion, heedless of 
any fear that it might prove beyond their compre- 
hension. This does not mean that he did not gauge 
his argument to his hearers. He did. Before a back 
district jury, in some justice's court, he could be 
a match in coarseness for Swift or Smollett, or Rabe- 
lais himself. Nothing was too malodorous for his 
use, if it was really of use. But he never forgot 
that men often admire what they possess the least of, 
— that in a speech fine language and lofty sentiment 
may appeal strikingly to those wlio Imve formed 
but a slender acquaintance with either in every-day 
life, and he rarely failed to flatter his listeners with 
a liberal supply of both. 

How many make the opposite mistake! When 
a New Hampshire politician rose to address the little 
town of Carroll in that state, and being the worse 
for liquor, began, "Fellow citizens, I have rosen" — 

146 



then stopped, dimly conscious that something was 
\^Tong, his colleague on the platform whispered i)n- 
patiently, ''Damn it, Jake, go on. Rosen's good 
enough for Carroll;" and he went on. That was not 
Bartlett's idea. He would rather have endorsed 
Rufus Choate's reply to the critic who asked him 
how he could expect a commonplace jury to appreci- 
ate his rhetoric. ''They appreciate which side it's 
on," said Choate, " and that's enough." As -^Ith 
Choate, too, the study of language was his delight. 
He would turn the pages of a dictionary by the hour. 
He came to Isaac Fletcher's office at Lyndon 
Corner one morning to study law, — the greenest, 
gawkiest lad in all these parts. With a few years 
of district schooling behind Mm, and a term or two 
in the Academy, he was to be from henceforth, in 
education, a law unto himself. What wonder that 
he never endured the rigorous discipline that makes 
a reasoner, never became a thorough lawyer. He 
had that laz^^, moody strength which, after each great 
effort, lapses into long periods of indolent repose 
wherein the brooding genius nourishes itself for 
another flight. On idle summer days he would sit 
from morning till night before his office door, steeped 
in the mellow sunshine, oblivious to all that passed 
around him. And yet he loved his books, — knew his 
Blackstone well and could plant his feet, at need, on 
the solid foundations of the law. It seems to have 
been a favorite device with him to give an unimportant 
case interest and dignity by clearly identifying it 
with some "fundamental principle," which, as he 
would proclaim in sounding phrase, "underlies the 
whole fabric of jurisprudence, — the \dndication of 

147 



which has twice deluged England with blood and more 
recently our own fair land in fraternal gore." We 
shall be apt to smile at the Buzfuzzian period. Per- 
haps his rival smiled, too, but he did so at his peril. 
It did its work. It impressed the imagination of his 
jury and tempted them to turn from, the confusion 
of claims and counter claims they hardly under- 
stood back to a broad and simple truth where the 
mind felt that it could rest in safety. His style 
must often have been pompous, grandiloquent. Yet 
no one could more deftly prick an overblown bubble for 
an opponent. I think it was Stoddard B. Colby, an 
accomplished advocate of that day, who once sat down 
after an impressive appeal which left the jury on the 
verge of tears. Bartlett rose and began in funereal 
tones, mth impeturbable gravity: ''Dearly beloved 
brethren, let us continue these solemn services by 
reading a brief portion of the original WTit." The 
strain was too intense, the spell was snapped and 
tears gave way to laughter. This faculty of reducing 
his antagonist 's position to absurdity, by saying ' ' such 
a simple thing in such a solemn way," was character- 
istic, and often did him yeoman service. Ossian Ray, 
then a young lawyer, was summing up a case of 
assult and battery against Bartlett 's client. In an 
unhappy moment he declared, ''We do not demand 
an exorbitant sum. We do not ask for a million 
dollars. ' ' The defendant sat within the bar, shabbily 
dressed, unkempt, a picture of poverty. Bartlett rose 
slowly to reply. "I knew my Brother Ray as a boy. 
He was a generous, noble-spirited lad. He has grown 
to be a generous, magnanimous man. He says he does 
not demand a million dollars of my client. I am 

148 



glad and grateful that he does not. For it* he slionld 
demand it, and you, gentlemen of the jury, should 
render a verdict for that amount, and my client 
should be compelled to pay it, he would be reduced 
to comparative proverty ; it would seriously impair his 
annual rents and profits." All this spoken vith a 
dignified courtesy, no curl of the lips, no twinkle in 
the eye, not a suggestion in voice or countenance that 
he was conscious of any incongruity whatever between 
his ragged client and this stately acknowledgment. 
The effect may be imagined; it can hardly be de- 
scribed. 

If he was not a power in Congress his case was 
not the first proof that eminence at the bar is no 
guaranty of success in a deliberative body. Perhaps 
he was not specially fitted to succeed there. But the 
reason why he failed, to start ^^dth, lies in this story. 
The 4th of July, 1851, was a gala day in Saint Johns- 
bury. There was a big tent and Bartlett was to be 
one of the speakers. "Was to be," for nobody was. 
A crowd of Dartmouth College students came up from 
Hanover, and, stationed A^dth tin horns at the opposite 
end of the pa^dlion, dro'^Tied with their noisy rivalry 
every voice that tried to make itself heard, even 
the lion roar of Bartlett. The chagrined orator 
published an angry letter reproving the scamps, and 
the scamps replied in a superior effort, holding up 
to ridicule the lawyer's well-knoA\Ti weaknesses and 
pompous mannerisms. When Bartlett took his seat 
in Congress he found himself already introduced to 
his fellow members by the irresponsible hoodlums, 
who had seen to it that a copy of their reply should 
be lying on every desk. His vulnerable point was 

149 



exposed, and when, later in the session, he rose to 
speak, he laid himself open to a sharp thrust from 
Polk of Tennessee. Warming as he went on, he began 
to soar, and finally declared in majestic tones, "Sir, 
were it not for the rules of the House, I would pour 
upon the opponents of this measure the phials of my 
wrath." Polk leaped to his feet, and intimating that 
fun was coming; moved "that the rules be suspended, 
and the gentleman permitted to pour.'' To pour 
under such circumstances was impossible even for 
Bartlett, and he sat do^^^l discomfited. 

His chief failing was intemperance; and this 
reminds me of his best witticism, which had this fail- 
ing for its subject. Like many other Democrats he 
became a Republican in the sixties. Being called out 
at a political meeting to make his first speech from 
his changed standpoint, he was too tipsy to stand with- 
out help, but steadying himself, he thus placated his 
audience: "Fellow citizens, I was born in Demo- 
cracy, I was nursed in Democracy, reared in Demo- 
cracy; I have lived in Democracy all my days, and 
some of its pernicious and damnable habits and prac- 
tices still cling to me — as you can see." Thereupon 
he launched into one of his finest efforts. 

Nobody could tell a story better. He had a 
Lincoln-like aptness in illustration. Once he tried 
a damage case against a circus, which travelled under 
the name of Sears and Company, for so negligently 
putting up its seats that the plaintiff fell and was 
injured. The defendants claimed that the circus 
belonged to Mr. Faxon of Liverpool, and that he alone 
was responsible. ''Gentlemen of the jury," said the 
advocate, "I have a dog, and a mean cur he is, too. 

150 



He kills your sheep. You call on me for damages. 
I say, 'Oh, no. The cur wears my name on hi^ 
collar. He comes when I whistle; he goes when I 
say ''ste-boy. " But the dog belongs to Mr. Faxon of 
Liverpool.' " 

No wonder he held the common people in his 
hand. He was one of them. When the news got 
out that Uncle Tom was to ' ' plead a case, ' ' the court- 
house was soon filled. He was sometimes accused 
of turning his back on the jury-box to tickle the 
outer benches. The criticism was a shallow one. He 
never forgot the panel. But lie knew better than to 
ignore the larger jury that sat by. He understood 
how contagious sympathy is, and running his eye 
along the rows of responsive faces outside the bar, 
he read the feelings of the more guarded jurymen 
before him. There were years when to retain Bartlett 
in a jary case was considered tantamount to victory 
— that is, if he should prove to be himself when the 
day of the trial came, which was not always the 
fact, for reasons before explained. I suspect the 
courthouse is still a more dramatic place in the coun- 
try than in the city. Everj^ case is more or less of 
a play anywhere, but here the draw,aUs personae are 
better known. It was even more truly so in his day. 
There was msmy a "celebrated cause.'' Neighbors 
gathered to watch its course and nudge each other 
at evers^ home thrust of witness or counsel. Every- 
})ody knew everybody. For a quarter of a century 
Tom Bartlett was the star actor in these familiar 
and exciting dramas. In one of them the defendant 
was a poor mdow, and the plaintiff a rich man with 
a reputation for hard-fistedness. The plaintift' seemed 

151 



to have the law on his side, but it looked like perse- 
cution. Bartlett assisted for the defense. When 
he reached the climax of his appeal to the jury he 
turned suddenly upon his colleague. "I am here 
at the solicitation of my young brother, serving with- 
out scrip and mthout price. I told him I would 
make no charge. I reconsider. I will charge, and he 
must now promise to repay. "When mjy shattered 
form shall be lying in the grave, and my wife shall 
be set upon by legal robbers, and he is standing by 
with warm heart and large experience, let him come 
to her defence as I have struggled to defend his client 
here today. Dale, will you do it?" ''I will," the 
young man answered, as he grasped the outstretched 
hand amid the breathless silence of the astonished 
court room. It was the finishing touch. The jury 
melted, and so did the plaintiff's case. 

How unlike our own must have been the at- 
mosphere of courts where such a scene was possible. 
If the advocate should return could he repeat his 
former triumphs? Hardly. At least not with the 
same training and equipment. I suppose it is not 
to be regretted that the day of such successes has 
gone by, that business now is done like business, 
that law and fact are coming to weigh more and more 
and rhetoric and pathos less and less. And yet it 
will be long before those who loved to witness such 
thrilling episodes under the old regime will cease to 
sigh over the prosy trials of today. For still the 
old men who gather in the court rooms of these 
counties measure each new advocate against the 
shadow of this man's passing fame, and when, as still 
may sometimies happen, a little breeze of eloquence 

152 



blows through the drowsy precincts of the court, they 
turn to one another and remark, ''That's not so bad, 
neighbor, after all," and, "N.o. That sounds a little 
mite like Thomas Bartlett. ' ' 



WHO DID SIN— THIS MAN OR HIS 
PARENTS? 

An Address at the Annual Meeting of the Incorporators of 

the Washington Home for Foundlings, December, 

1912. 

"And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which 
was blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, 
saying. Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, 
that he was born blind? Jesus answered, neither 
hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the 
works of God should be made manifest in him, ' ' And 
He gavt him sight. The disciples' question was spec- 
ulative: the IMaster's reply was practical. The ques 
tion implied that other men might stand apart and 
let the afflicted bear the consequences of sin. The 
answer implied that afflictions are opportunities for 
good men to do the works of God. Men are not to 
seek in the causes of other men's afflictions an excuse 
for their own hard-heartedness. But if we relieve sin 
from the rigor of its consequences shall we not en- 
courage sin? So thought the heirs of Joshua Pierce 
when they attempted to defeat their ancestor's gen- 
erous gift. ''A hospital for foundlings," so they 
argued, ''tends to evil and ought not to be supported." 
What answer did the Supreme Court make to that 
contention ? Here is what they said : 

''Hospitals for foundlings existed in the 
Roman Empire. They increased when 

154 



Christianity triumphed. They exist in all 
countries of Europe, and tliey exist in this 
country. There are no beneficiaries more 
needing protection, care, and kindness, none 
more blameless, and there are none who have 
stronger claims, than these waifs, helpless 
and abandoned upon the sea of life. ' ' 
In these words we seem to hear an echo of the 
Voice that said, ''I must work the works of Him that 
sent me while it is day. The night cometh when no man 
can work. As long as I am in the world I am the 
Light of the World." And He spat upon the ground 
and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. 
I have not inquired what form of religion Joshua 
Pierce professed. The institution he founded does 
not bear the name of any sect. Even if he had never 
gone to church I think we should have preferred 
his society to that of his heirs, no matter how orthodox 
they may have been ; for this work of his shows clearly 
that he had come close to the heart of Him who 
took the little children in his arms and blessed them. 
It was in 1869 that Joshua Pierce died, leaving 
a will which gave fourteen lots on Fifteenth street to 
trustees, to be turned over by them to a corporation, 
when the same should be legally established, and to be 
used as a site for a hospital for foundlings. The 
devise was attacked by the heirs, with General Ben- 
jamin F. Butler as their counsel. It was defended 
by Walter S. Cox, Esq., afterwards a distinguished 
judge of the Supreme Court of our District. The 
case was won for the charity in the District Court and 
the judgment was affirmed in the Supreme Court of 
the United States without a dissenting voice. But 

155 ' 



the lawsuit had dragged on for several years. It 
was 1877 before the will was finally established. 
Then the noble men and women of that day who saw 
the opportunity for good that was presented set to 
work to raise money for a building. They secured 
forty thousand dollars and built the Home. But 
this had taken ten years mjore, and it was not until 
1887 that its doors were opened. During the twenty- 
five years that have succeeded there have come in 
over its threshold hundreds of these little cast-aways, 
to find shelter, warmth and comiort, skillful care 
and tender nursing, and to go out again, not to the 
cold doorstep or the vacant lot, but to hom^es that made 
them welcome and to which they brought a compen- 
sating joy. Cautiously and prudently their homes 
have been selected, where they have been received, 
not as apprenticed servants, not as step-children, but 
as adopted sons and daughters, under the sanction of 
the court, and taking with their adoption the inherit- 
able blood. 

This work has owed much of its success to those 
generous and gracious women, the Board of Lady 
Vistors and the Pierce Guild, who have found ways 
and means to supplement the insufficient revenues of 
the Home and furnish comforts and conveniences which 
the directors have been unable to supply. Year by 
year the Government, too, has lent its aid, first by a 
lump sum appropriated annually, and, since the crea- 
tion of the Board of Charities, by a certain sum that 
is paid for each child that is entered through the 
approval of that Board. About one-third of the cost 
of maintenance is thus provided by payments from 
the Government, and a considerably larger number of 

156 



children could be received and cared for with great 
advantage to the income of the Home if only more 
frequent assignments to the Home could be secured. 
Some revenue is received also from poor parents, un- 
mlling to part with their children, who are permitted 
to enter them in the Home for temporary care. But 
the increased cost of living has borne hard upon the 
Home, and it is sadly in need of funds. Its affairs 
are directed by a Board of Incorporators. An in- 
corporator is anybody who is willing to give five dollars 
a year. You are all eligible. Our doctrine of election 
is that which was vouched for by Henry Ward 
Beecher: ''The elect are those that will, the non-elect 
are these that won't." We urge you tonight to make 
your calling and election sure. We need you. The 
Home needs you The little ones are reaching out 
their hands. If 3^ou have never visited the Home, 
please do. On Fifteenth street, between R and S. 
You will see the name over the door, The Washington 
Home for Foundlings. Go in and see what kind 
hearts and skillful hands have been able to do, even 
with the insufficient means at their command, to turn 
misery into happiness and to make that happiness, in 
turn, minister to the happiness of others by bringing 
the light of children's faces into childless homes. Go 
and see the little ones for yourselves. See what is 
being done for them. Think of what their lives may 
be both to themselves and to others, and then tliink 
of what their lives must have been if, in the shape 
of this blessed institution, the Son of Man had not 
passed by. They come, feeble and sick ofttimes. 
Here, tended with expert skill and tireless devotion, 
by nurses and a medical staff generous and humane, 

157 



the death rate among them has been reduced year by 
year until its smallness is a matter of surprise to 
all. Education, strictly, does not come within the 
scope of such a home, yet for those who remain to 
such an age as needs it a kindergarten is provided. 
But before that age is reached the effort of their bene- 
factors is to find for them a home — a real, true home. 
We are now approaching the Christmas season, when 
of all seasons in the year the home seems dearest to 
us — to us who have a home. For us the hearth-fire 
burns. Shall it not burn for these little ones as well? 
In one of those charming epistles of hospitality 
which the poet Horace sent his friends from the Sabine 
farm this phrase occurs: Tibi splendet focus. 

For thee the hearth-fire shineth! So he sang 
Who halved with Virgil the Augustan crown. 

And if the million splendors that upsprang 

From sacked and flaming cities have died down. 

Smile, gentle Sabine, for your little ray 

Of Roman firelight reaches us today. 

The hearth-fires are the beacons of the race; 

From age to age their happy light is passed. 
By such as kindly burned the King shall trace 

The course of His own coming at the last. 
And this shall be the sign that He is come, 
That even His poorest child has found a home. 



158 



WHITTIER : A QUAKER WHO BECAME 
A MARTIAL POET 

A Centennial Address, at the Friends' Meeting House in 
Washington, D. C, December 17, 1907. 

"Oh, for a knight like Bayard, 

Without reproach or fear; 
My light glove on his casque of steel, 

My love-knot on his spear! 

Oh, for the white plume floating 

Sad Zutphen's field above — 
The lion heart in battle. 

The woman's heart in love! 

Oh, that man once more were manly. 
Woman's pride, and not her scorn: 

That once more the pale young mother 
Dared to boast, A man is born!" 

One hundred years ago today a pale young 
mother might have made that boast with perfect 
truth if God had lifted for her eyes the curtain of 
the century. 

Nature seems to delight in antithesis. She must 
have been in her most ironical mood when she pre- 
pared to bring forth from that quiet Quaker house- 
hold the greatest war-bard of the age. For Wliittier 
was the laureate of the greatest moral conflict, cul- 
minating in the greatest martial conflict, the world 
has ever seen. He was the ansAver to his o^ti fiery 
question : 

159 



•'Where's the man for Massachusetts? 
Where's the voice to speak her free? 
Where's the hand to light up bon-fires from her 
mountains to the sea?" 

Frail as a girl, he carried a heart that throbbed 
as if it had been the battle-drum of his generation. 
Shy in bearing and hestitating in speech, he was the 
most eloquent voice of his day. "Gentlest of the 
Sons of Thunder" — so Gail Hamilton addressed himi; 
and there was never a truer title; for gentle though 
he was, he was a Son of Thunder. Even in appear- 
ance there was a hint of something martial — tall, 
erect, with straight black brows and, underneath, 
those eyes, dark and "glowing like anthracite coal," 
eyes almost as glorious as his kinsman's, Daniel Webs- 
ter. The Quaker coat was buttoned around a breast 
as brave as Bayard's. His face, grave and serious 
as a psalm, would break into a smile of indescribable 
sweetness, where lights and shadows chased each other 
to and fro. "Worn with suffering, weary with loss of 
sleep, and weighed down with the gloomy sense of 
his own imperfections, he nevertheless had a droll 
and quiet humor that always kept him sane. He 
devoted the best part of his life to the destruction 
of the peculiar institution of the South, and, unlike 
somte other Northern poets, refused to omit from his 
completed works his anti-slavery poems ; yet he is to- 
day the most popular of Northern poets in the South. 
He always preferred a worship utterly devoid of cere- 
monial; he launched the fiercest phillipic of his cen- 
tury against the Pope ; and yet his verse is sprinkled 
with poetic appreciations of the beautiful rites of 
the mother church, and he himself declared that the 

160 



creeds which separated Christians were notliing more 
to him than spiders' webs. Always frail and often 
ill, facing death again and again, he yet outlived 
nearly all of his contemporaries and died at the great 
age of eighty-four, A^erifying the witty prescription 
of Dr. Holmes that to be sure of a long life one ought 
to be born with an incurable disease. "We deprecate 
pain and yet nothing is more certain than that suffer- 
ing made him the saint he was. "I was born," he 
said, 'SAnthout an atom of patience in my compos- 
ition. I have tried to manufacture it as it was 
needed. ' ' Critics have lamented that his great poetic 
gift should have been spent on reformjs instead of 
being dedicated to some purely artistic work; and 
yet the candid student of Whittier's life closes the 
book with the unclouded assurance that but for the 
new birth that came to Whittier in the cause of anti- 
slavery he never w^ould have been a poet at all. That 
call to the help of the slave and his own feeble 
health — those two things are all that saved him from 
passing into history as an accomplished politician. 

We are not here tonight to pay our debt to 
Whittier but only to acknowledge it. The mighty 
struggle of which he was a part came to its inevitable 
close and passed into history. No one will ever be 
able to read of it without reading of him. 

For nearly thirty years after the downfall of 
slavery he lived to write on many another theme, ful- 
filling the wdsh he had expressed even while singing 
that severer strain: 

"Oh, not of choice, for themes of public wrong, 
I leave the green and pleasant paths of song! 
More dear to me some song of private worth, 

161 



Some homely idyl of my native North, 
Some summer pastoral of her inland vales, 
Or, grim and weird, her winter fireside tales." 

But, portrayer of New England life, as he was, 
mmistrel of her Aveird and wondrous legendry, sing- 
er of her beaury and her strength, poet of nature and 
of man, of field and wood, of hill and ocean, and 
likewise of the human soul, — faithful painter, gentle, 
loving mystic, artist and saint in one, — he was some- 
thing beyond all this. He was a prophet of the liv- 
ing God ! The fire that burned in Daniel and Ezekiel 
burned in him. His lips were touched with a coal 
from o3' the same altar. "Woe is me," he cried, 
' ' that my mother bore me a m'an of strife and conten- 
tion!" 

No man can draw a true portrait of Whittier 
without painting it against the dark and awful 
background of human slavery. With the help of 
climate and economic conditions the North had sloughed 
off that horrible institution while it had fastened 
itself with close and closer hold upon the South. But 
Northern business was bound up with slavery and 
cotton was king. When men began to agitate for the 
abolition of slavery it was all their lives were worth. 
Free speech itself was at stake. Mobs ruled every 
Northern city. Pennsylvania Hall, in Philadelphia, 
the building in which Whittier, then editing the 
"Pennsylvania Freeman," had his office, was burned 
to the ground in a pro-slavery riot on the day of its 
dedication. In Boston Garrison was dragged through 
the streets with a rope around his body and lodged in 
jail to save his life. Whittier himself was repeatedly 
mobbed, pelted with rotten eggs, and once stoned 

162 



through the streets of Concord in New Hampshire. 
Here in Washington, Dr. Crandall lay in jail until his 
health was ruined, for lending to a brother physican 
a copy of Whittier's pamphlet, ''Justice and Exped- 
iency." Court and Congress, school and college, the 
market, the pulpit, the press, the so-called patriot- 
ism and respectability of the day, were all against 
them. Anti-slavery was the sedition of the streets. 
It was in such a time that the gentle Quaker, child 
of the Muses, born to the serene life of the scholar 
and loving, as he feared, too well, the praise and good 
will of his fellow-men, took his place with the outcast 
and the despised. No wonder that he said, ''Anti- 
slavery owes me nothing. It made me what I am." 

"No common wrong provoked his zeal; 
The silken gauntlet that is thrown 
In such a quarrel rings like steel." 

Whittier wrote hundreds of poems before he gave 
himself to the cause of the slave, yet not one of them 
is reckoned today as of the slightest literary merit. He 
was himself ashamed of them. In his completed 
works, if they are included at all, they are relegated 
to the appendix, and only serve to measure the vast 
difference between the versifier and the poet. The 
fact is, that the greatness of "Whittier lay in the 
depth and earnestness of his moral nature. He 
was not primarily an artist. No one knew it better 
than he. "That last verse is a little long," he would 
admit, ' ' but it expresses exactly what I want to say. ' ' 
' ' Did you : itend the alliteration in that title ? ' ' asked 
an admirer. "I never in my life gave a thought to 
such a matter," was the unaffected answer. P"'or 

163 



years he pondered the history of the banished 
Acadians, thinking to make of it a poem. At last, 
Longfellow made it immortal in ''Evangeline." "I 
am glad Longfellow did it," said Whittier. ''I should 
have spoiled the artistic effect by giving vent to my 
indignation over the injustice." His rhymes are 
often imperfect, but there is a sweet accord of right 
and reason that reconciles the heart. There is a 
fervor in his verse that makes the lamest line leap 
like a deer. 

How shall we account for Whittier? Where 
did he get the qualities that made him great? He 
had a father who never wasted breath — so his son 
declared — tall, strongly built, quick as a cat, prompt 
and decisive in word and deed, an uncompromising 
Quaker, lending small sympathy to his boy's love 
of letters. He had a mother, loveliest and saintliest 
of women, whose native refinement, dignified bearing 
and benign expression impressed and charmed all who 
knew her — fair in face, with dark expressive eyes — 
for fifty years the guide, counsellor and friend of her 
illustrious son. Then he had a sister, Elizabeth, whom 
Colonel Higginson pronounced a wonder among 
women — younger than Grireenleaf by eight years, his 
pet in childhood, his closest literary friend in mature 
life, the sharer of every enthusiasm and every danger, 
— who often 

"tuned his song 

To sweeter music by her delicate ear." 

''No one can truly estimate the long celibate life 
of the poet," said Higginson, "without bearing in 
mind that he had at his own fireside the concentrated 
wit and sympathy of all womankind in that one 

164 



sister." There was his brother Matthew, five years 
younger, yet stronger, quicker, more alert, taking the 
lead in work and play. Greenleaf himself was by no 
means precocious. He could never remember any- 
thing that happened back of the time when he was 
six years old. Dreamy, imaginative, apt to fall into 
what his Uncle Moses called a "stood" — especially 
when Uncle Moses was telling his marvelous tales of 
the wild animals he had met. (Let us not think of 
him as a fakir ! ) There was Aunt Mercy, — 

"The sweetest woman ever Fate, 
Perverse denied a household mate," 

whose own life had not been without its touch of 
tragedy and romance. 

These made the family circle; these with the 
schoolmaster, when the course of boarding round 
brought him to "hold at the fire his favored place." 
There was little companionship of books in those 
first years. Thirty would number all. But those he 
knew by heart, especially the Bible and the lives of 
holy men. And there was the great beautiful, ever- 
beckoning world of nature outside with its changing 
seasons and all the glories of the sky. How he loved 
it! How affluent he was in such possessions! 

"I was rich in flowers and trees, 
Humming-birds and honey-bees;' 
For my sport the squirrel played. 
Plied the snouted mole his spade; 
For my taste the blackberry cone 
Purpled over hedge and stone; 
Laughed the brook for my delight 
Through the day and through the night. 
Whispering at the garden wall. 
Talked with me from fall to fall." 

165 



You see, the powers that were bent on making 
him a poet were already at their work. No sect, how 
ever narrow and ascetic, could stifle in such a boy the 
love of beauty. Whittier, true to the faith of his 
fathers, always protested against modern innovations 
in the worship of the Society of Friends. He opposed 
the introduction of music, saying, ''Two hundred 
years of silence lias taken all the sing out of 
Quakers." But it had not taken all the sing out of 
this Quaker, as you see. Royally fed and becomingly 
served he was too, the young Sybarite — not at all 
after the Quaker fashion. Never was found anything 
quite up to it afterwards: 

"Oh, for festal dainties spread 
Like my bowl of milk and bread! 
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood 
On the door-stone gray and rude." 

The men who settled the North Atlantic coast 
were a long time finding out that they could not 
live in the new England as they had in the old. They 
spent a couple of hundred years trying to toughen 
themselves, their children and their cattle instead of 
stopping up the cracks and putting on warm clothes. 
We shall never know how much of Whittier 's ill- 
health was chargeable to such exposure. He thought 
a great deal of it was. The snow drifted across 
his bed in winter; he went without flannels, he rode 
for miles without an overcoat to meeting and there 
sat in a sort of cold storage v^dth the elders. By the 
time he was fifteen he had reached his full height 
and soon after he broke dowTi his constitution, his 
nephew and biographer informs us, by over-taxing 
his young strength at the plow and flail. Yet even 

166 



the hard, stiff lines of life taught him self-reliance, 
self-devotion; and every homely feature of his toil- 
some occupation, takes on a sort of glory in the im- 
mortal picture he has painted of the New England 
homestead and fireside circle when it found itself 
snow-bound : 

"Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door. 
While the red logs before us beat 
The frost-line back with tropic heat." 

One day the schoolmaster brought to the home 
circle a copy of Burns. He read the poems and 
interpreted the dialect. Greenleaf sat spell-bound 
in his corner and when the reading was over he was 
found to be in his "stood." Observing his interest 
the master left the book with him, and what the 
Scotch poet became to him thereafter, why should 
I try to tell when Whittier has told it in such words as 
these, written long years afterwards "on receiving a 
sprig of heather?" 

"I call to mind the summer day, 

The early harvest mowing, 
The sky with sun and clouds at play. 

And flowers with breezes blowing. 

How oft that day, with fond delay, 

I sought the maple's shadow, 
And sang with Burns the hours away 

Forgetful of the meadow! 

Bees hummed, birds twittered, overhead 

I heard the squirrels leaping; 
The good dog listened while I read, 

And wagged his tail in keeping. 

167 



New light on home-seen Nature beamed, 

New glory over woman; 
And daily life and duty seemed 

No longer poor and common. 

O'er rank and pomp, as he had seen, 

I saw the Man uprising; 
No longer common or unclean, 

The child of God's baptizing!" 

That poem, I think, gives us the truest insight 
into the poet's education we shall ever get. For, we 
all know, it is in such moments of over-mastering 
love and admiration that the mind is drawn out, or 
as we call it, educated. So Emerson confessed that a 
few stolen hours with stray books, read under the 
lid of his desk at the Latin School, had yielded him 
more treasure than all the studies in the curriculum. 
But it was more than education, it was almost con- 
version. It taught him the true meaning of life; 
it taught him the reverence due to woman and the 
sacredness of man. Thenceforth he could never look 
complacently upon any deed, law or institution that 
tended to degrade a fellow man. 

He had a good start on that road already. In 
after years, when what called itself religion, was 
trying to save the Union by justifying slavery, he 
used to say with quiet sarcasm, "My father was an 
old-fashioned Democrat and really believed in the 
Preamble to the Bill of Rights and the Declaration 
of Independence. It was never my privilege to hear 
a pro-slavery sermon, and I grew up in blissful igno- 
rance of the Gospel according to Parson Adams. ' ' At 
school, the reading book was plentifully sprinkled 
with anti-slavery prose and poetry. It w^as the 

168 



common district school. Whittier never went to any 
other until he was nineteen, and only went to this a 
part of each year ; and even then he went, as he said, 
to schoolmasters, who, with only two exceptions, 
were unfit for the position. Yet even that lowly in- 
stitution he has immortalized in verse which the 
severest critic of his day admitted to be a perfect 
poem : 

"Still sits the school-house by the road, 
A ragged beggar sleeping; 

Around it still the sumachs grow, 
And blackberry-vines are creeping." 

He sat on the shoemaker's bench making slippers 
until he had money enough to take a term or two 
in the Academy. He taught school a single term and 
by that time he had learned to write so well that 
he was able to conduct a newspaper. But before that 
he fell in with Garrison. 

It came about in this way. His sister, unknown to 
him, had sent some of his verses to Garrison who was 
then editing a paper at Newburyport. "What children 
they all were! Garrison himself was only twenty- 
one and Whittier was but nineteen. The poem was 
printed in the next issue. Whittier was at work 
with his father beside the road, laying a stone wall, 
when the mail carrier, going by, tossed the paper at 
his feet. He opened it and in a sort of stupor saw 
his name and verses. Again and again he opened and 
stared at it until his fatlier sharply called him to 
his work. Yet though he stared at it so often and 
so long, he has assured us that he did not really read 
a word. Soon after that. Garrison came out to see 
him, and the bare-footed youth stole in at the back 

169 



door to put on his shoes before facing his visitor. Ah ! 
but that was a great meeting ! Two boys, but one of 
them destined to be the moral leader of his age and 
the other the laureate of human freedom. If Garri- 
son had never done anything more than to bring 
John Greenleaf Whittier to the side of the slave, he 
could have given a good account of his life. But 
"Whittier did not really espouse abolition until 1833, 
and this was 1826. Still that was the beginning of 
a friendship, perhaps the most important in Whittier 's 
life, which, in spite of every difference of opinion, 
remained unbroken to the last. Do you wish to be 
reminded of Whittier 's regard for Garrison? 

"I love thee with a brother's love, 

I feel my pulses thrill. 
To mark thy spirit soar above 

The cloud of human ill." 

Nearly fifty years later, when Garrison was laid 
in his grave, he took up the strain once more: 

"The storm and peril overpast. 
The hounding hatred shamed and still, 

Go, soul of freedom! take at last 
The place which thou alone canst fill." 

So, then, the influences that molded Whittier 's 
life and character were such as these. A pure and 
hardy strain; a life close to the soil; a creed that 
counted wealth, fame, learning itself, as of small 
moment to the spirit's life; a stern, high-minded 
father, a noble spiritual-minded mother, refined and 
loving sisters; tasks beyond a boy's green strength; 
the gift of a poet's eye, a poet's ear, a poet's heart; 
surroundings fitted to touch and train eye, ear and 
heart to poet uses ; while yet a boy, falling in love with 

170 



Robert Burns, the very prince of poets; and being 
brought at manhood face to face with the ]\Iartin 
Luther of his age, to catch the glow of his great 
spirit and be consecrated body and soul to a righteous, 
unpopular cause — fired with all the enthusiasms for 
humanity! Yes, these are the things of which we 
must take note when we try to account for Whittier. 

In 1832 Whittier was twenty-five years old. He 
thought he had turned his back on poetry; he had 
made up his mind to become a prominent politician. 
He said, "I have knocked Pegasus on the head, as a 
tanner does his bark-mill donkey when he is past 
service." He had taken a hand in editing several 
political journals; he had had a taste of power and 
it had gone to his head. If you want to see what sort 
of party leader he would have made, read the advice 
he gave for preventing an election in his Congression- 
al district until he himself should be of age to go to 
Congress! It was present applause he coveted in 
those days, not the far-off voice of fame. *'Who 
would ask a niche in that temple where the dead alone 
are crowned ? I would not choose between a nettle and 
a rose to grow upon my grave." Those were his 
words then. But when he was an old man he laid 
his hand on a boy's head and said, *'My lad, if thou 
Avouldst win success, join thyself to some unpopular 
but noble cause." 

It was in the spring of 1833 that Whittier ' ' came 
out." It was then he wrote his great pamphlet, 
''Justice and Expediency," and paid the best part 
of a year's earnings to get it printed — five hundred 
copies. That was when he crossed The Rubicon; that 
was when he burned his ships behind him. 

171 



He didn't do it in a flurry of excitement either. 
His biographer tells us that he counted the cost with 
Quaker coolness. In many sleepless nights he faced 
the consequences. He knew he was throwing aw^ay 
the last hope of political distinction and turning his 
back on the rewards of letters. But he did it ; and he 
did it with a thoroughness worthj^ of his blood and 
breeding. In that pamphlet he covered the whole 
ground and fortified every position. It was bold 
to the point of rashness. It attacked the African 
Colonization Society. The president of that Society 
was Henry Clay, Whittier's political idol. The Whig 
leaders were its chief promoters. The church treated 
it as one of the Christian missions and took up col- 
lections for its support. "Whittier tore the mask from 
the humbug and showed that it was nothing but an aid 
to slavery — a way of getting rid of free negroes 
who made the slaves uneasy and sometimes helped 
them to escape. Lewis Tappan paid for an extra edi- 
tion of five thousand. Great journals took it up and 
sent it* far and wide. How it was regarded in th e South 
is shown by the fact already referred to that for lend- 
ing it to a brother physician Dr. Crandall was ar- 
rested, flung into the old Washington city prison, and 
finally set free only to die from the effects of his 
imprisonment. 

Now come the years of bitter want, of pinching 
poverty. Now the frugal habits of his early life stand 
him in good stead. Unable to read or write beyond 
a half hour at a time without severe pain, utterly 
unable to bear the strain of two hours continuous 
application, he can do a little bookkeeping; he can 
write an editorial now and then, and thus wdth the 

172 



sympathy and help of liis mother and sister, he 
keeps the wolf from the door. But the poems which 
roused the sleeping conscience of the nation and 
finally brought him the richest crown of fame, — 
those brought him no bread in those days. His father 
died. Greenleaf was too feeble to carry on the farm, 
and so, in 1836, they sold the old homestead and 
bought a small cottage in Amesbury, a few miles away ; 
and here for fifty-six years, the remainder of his life, 
he made his home. 

It was in the spring of 1833 that he had sent 
forth his pamphlet. In December of the same year 
the anti-slavery convention met in Philadelphia. 
Wliittier w^as too poor to go, but a friend finally 
supplied the means, and Whittier's name appears up- 
on the declaration that was there adopted. "All 

felt, ' ' said he, ' ' the responsibility of the occasion 

The shadow and forecast of a lifelong struggle rested 
upon every countenance." That was the solemn set- 
ting of the seal. Whittier always looked back upon 
it as his surest title to the gratitude of m^ankind. 
It was after he had risen to world-wide fame that 
he wrote those memorable words: "I am not insensi- 
ble to literary reputation. I love, perhaps too w^ell, 
the praise and good-will of my fellowmen. But I 
set a higher value on my name as appended to the 
anti-slavery declaration of 1833 than on the title-page 
of any book." 

Now he begins to learn the difference between 
piety and morality. After a mob at Newburyport, 
when the speakers were pelted with all sorts of un- 
savory missiles and the meeting broken up, he turned 
to an Orthodox minister, one of the few of that 

173 



day who stood by them, and said, ''I am surprised 
that we should be disturbed in a quiet Puritan city 
like Newburyport. I have lived near it for years 
and thought it was a pious city." The aged minis- 
ter laying his hand on Whittier's slioulder said, 
^' Young man, when you are as old as I am, you will 
understand that it is easier to be pious than it is 
to be good." Whittier was learning to classify men 
and institutions by a new principle. "Anti-slavery 
is going on well, ' ' said he, ' ' in spite of mobs, Andover 
Seminary and rum." 

As time went on the abolitionists separated into 
two camps — those who believed in political activity un- 
der the existing Constitution and those who did not. 
The latter wing was led by Garrison, who aimed at 
nothing less than a dissolution of the Union, spuming 
the old Constitution, by reason of its pro-slavery 
compromises, as " a covenant with death and an agree- 
ment with hell." Whittier believed in making the 
best of the Constitution as it was. He was a born 
politician. He realized, perhaps better than Garri- 
son, the tremendous force of Union sentiment. He 
said, "The moral and political power required for 
dissolving the Union could far more easily abolish 
every vestige of slavery." So, he made use of every 
political weapon he could lay his hands on. Gifted 
with a sagacity as rare as Lincoln's, he turned to 
account every chance he saw to elect anti-slavery 
candidates of either party in his district and state. 
He stood behind John Quincy Adams in his great 
contest for the right of petition. He wrung pledges 
from reluctant Congressmen to present anti-slavery 
petitions, and, when they showed signs of weakening, 

174 



faced them with the prospect of defeat in the next 
election. Though in a minority party, and that a 
small one, he swung the power he wielded from side 
to side Avith telling effect as the interests of freedom 
could be promoted. In 1835 he sat for Haverhill in 
the legislature of Massachusetts. In 1836 he was 
elected the second time but was too ill to take his 
seat. For many years he was a familiar figure about 
the lobby of the State House, whenever his presence 
would aid the cause he had at heart. Wendell Phillips 
said, he was ''a superb hand at lobbying." He 
never worked for personal ends but he put to use 
his shrewd judgment of men, his keen insight into 
human motives, and attacked the consciences of public 
men by the line of least resistance. He never hesi- 
tated to gain a step for liberty by appealing to the 
selfish ambition of statesmen who could not be reached 
by loftier appeals. 

So effectually did he handle his forces that in 
1837, when Van Buren in his inaugural had announced 
that he would oppose every attempt to abolish slavery 
in the District of Columbia, and the Boston papers 
of both parties joined hands to defeat all legisla- 
tive resolutions on the subject, Whittier and his little 
band carried House and Senate, almost without a 
dissenting vote, against the press and President. It 
was then that he told Rantoul the secret of abolition 
successes. "No party in the country," he said, ''is 
so well organized as theirs. Asking nothing for 
themselves and contending only for principles under 
the impulse of duty, there is nothing but harmony 
and unison among them. So long as they remain thus 
they are invincible.'* 

175 



He (lid not believe in dividing the ranks by in- 
troducing other issues. Agreeing entirely \\ith Gar- 
rison that women should vote and hold office, he 
yet counselled against forcing the issue upon anti- 
slavery conventions and thereby driving away those 
who were not ready for the enfranchisement of women. 
He was willing to work with any sincere friend of 
the slave, whatever his views might be on other ques- 
tions. His own society, the Friends, did not satisfy 
his ideals in its attitude towards slavery and he did not 
hesitate to rebuke it; yet he would not turn his back 
on Quakerism. It has been well said that the abol- 
ition movement needed just such a balance-wheel as 
Whittier proved to be. For one thing, he had a broad 
charity for every honest difference of opinion. In 
every church and party he found men he loved. He 
hated slavery ; he never hated the slave-holder. When 
the Civil War was in sight he urged that compensa- 
tion be tendered to any slave State that would enter 
on the work of emancipation. He thought the North 
should show itself ready to make every financial sacri- 
fice for such an end. All his life he numbered among 
his personal friends not only apologists for slavery, 
but slave-holders themselves. He was amjong the very 
first to hail the genius of the Carolinian poet, Timrod ; 
and Paul H. Hayne was counted among his intimate 
friends; although both wrote fiery lyrics against the 
North. When the war was over and Charles Sumner 
proposed that the national banners should not longer 
be inscribed with the names of battles of the Civil 
War, in which they had been carried — battles that 
had been fought between fellow citizens of a re-united 
republic — and Massachusetts, in legislature, cen- 

176 



sured her great senator for his magnanimous act, 
"Whittier came to his side with all his old time fervor, 
and stood there with all his old time constancy, never 
resting until he had secured the repeal of the obnox- 
ious resolution. That was a single instance of the 
spirit he always showed. 

Can we not see how this very absence of personal 
malignity doubled and redoubled the weight of his 
terrible invective? Barren of every suggestion of 
petty spite, his moral judgment came like a verit- 
able Thus Saith the Lord. How plain it appears now, 
as we look back upon it, that everything in his life had 
really been preparing him to be the prophet of his 
people. He spoke the language of the common folk, 
for he was one of them; He was distinctively the 
poet of the people. Holmes was more witty; Bryant 
more massive and sonorous; Longfellow more refined 
and graceful; Lowell more brilliant and versatile; 
and Emerson, as Whittier himself declared, now and 
then sent a stray shaft above them all; yet none of 
them ever crept quite so near the popular heart. 
Somehow, the people felt that Whittier was all their 
own. Even the fact that he did not go to college 
was, I doubt not, a positive advantage in the work 
he was set apart to do. His imagery was drawn from 
the Bible. His illustrations were taken from the toils 
and amusements of the farmers, the fishermen, the 
tradesmen to whom his winged words were sent. 
What simplicity of style! What directness of state- 
ment ! What energj^ of appeal ! What homely and 
yet at times what sublime eloquence! Remember, 
these poems were written for the multitude. The 
canvas was painted for the public square. The man 

177 



who was swinging the sledge, the mam who was 
hoisting the sail, the man who was making his slow 
way across the prairie — these were the consciences he 
sought to rouse. It needed words ringing and robust. 
He might have said to himself what he said to Ronge, 

"Strike home, strong-^hearted man! Down to the root 
Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel! 
Thy work is to hew down. In God's name, then. 
Put nerve into thy task!" 

And so he did. 

I wish the hour permitted to quote more liber- 
ally than is possible from his ''Voices of Freedom." 
But, as it is, one or two must speak for all. George 
Latimer was arrested in Boston without a warrant, 
as an alleged fugitive from slavery, on the mere re- 
quest of a man from Norfolk, Virginia, claiming to 
be his master. The case caused great excitement South 
and North. Sixty thousand citizens of Massachusetts 
petitioned Congress for laws and Constitutional 
amendments to relieve free states from joining in 
slave hunts and from all complicity with the hated 
institution. On the other hand, citizens of Virginia 
met in convention and threatened to make war on 
Massachusetts if she failed to send back their slaves. 
It was at the height of this storm of popular fury 
that Whittier sent forth his lyric, ''Massachusetts 
to Virginia." 

Whittier was too just not to acknowledge — he 
did acknowledge over and over again —that the hands 
of I he North were by no means clean in the miatter of 
slavery. In the strongest figure ever used to describe 
the true meaning of the Civil War he stated the 
case as it was. To get the full force of the tremend- 

178 



ous metaphor we must call to mind the scene in Our 
Savior's life to which he alludes, — when the demon 
was cast out and tore his victim as he left him so 
that he fell down as one dead : 

"What if the cast-out spirit tear 

The nation in his going? 
We who have shared the guilt must share 

The pang of his o'erthrowing." 

Kansas was the storm center in 1857 and '58. 
Douglas' doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty had caught 
the popular whim, and whether Kansas should be a 
free state or a slave state was to be decided by the men 
who should settle there. Accordingly thousands upon 
thousands of northern men streamed across the Miss- 
issippi Valley into the new state chanting Whittier's 
majestic h^onn : 

"We cross the prairie as of old 
The pilgrims crossed the sea, 

To make the West, as they the East, 
The homestead of the free!" 

Well, it was bleeding Kansas in those days. The 
massacre of unarmed and unoffending men at the 
hands of border ruffians from Missouri in the ' ' Marsh 
of the Swan" called out a lyric from Whittier un- 
equalled perhaps even among his o^vn for its inten- 
sity of suppressed emotion. I quote only the first 
stanza and the last: 

"A blush as of roses 

Where rose never grew! 
Great drops on the bunch-grass, 

But not of the dew! 



179 



On the lintels of Kansas 

That blood shall not dry; 
Henceforth the Bad Angel 

Shall harmless go by; 
Henceforth to the sunset, 

Unchecked on her way. 
Shall Liberty follow 

The march of the day." 

Millions were learning to listen lor his call. Our 
debt to Whittier is that the gift of verse becani;e 
in his hand not a lute but a trumpet — not a toy but 
a weapon. "I feel more like a wild Berserker," he 
confessed, ''than like a carpet ministrel with my 
singing robes about me." He blew a blast longer, 
louder, more compelling than the one Roland blew 
at Roncesvalles. 

Courage! What is the courage that inspires a 
soldier to brave death, cheered on by comrades, and 
beckoned by the laurelled hand of victory — what is 
that to the courage it takes to defy the supposed cul- 
ture and character of the whole community — to take a 
position that makes you the laugliing-stock of the 
street and leads your best friends to think you a fool ! 
Quaker as he was, Whittier was a born fighter. He 
felt the joy of battle. When Richard Hinton was in- 
troduced to him as the man who witii the aid of a good 
Winchester had helped to make Kansas a free state, 
Whittier laid his hand gently on Hinton 's shoulder 
and asked : " So thee believes in fighting for liberty ? ' ' 
''Yes," he replied. "Well, then," said Whittier, his 
dark eyes flashing, "if thee must fight, fight well and 
fight to the end." In war time, when a Quaker 
brother took counsel with Whittier, whether he had 
better fulfill his contract with the government to 

180 



furnish certain oak timber, seeing he was morally 
certain the timber was to be used in constructing a 
battle-ship and his peace conscience was troubling 
him, Whittier, after teasing him awhile, finally said 
at parting, '"Now friend, if thee really does furnish 
any of that oak timber, see to it that it is all sound. ' ' 
I alluded in the beginning to his sense of humor. 
Those who knew Whittier through his verse only 
ean hardly understand how very keen it w^as. It 
was a family trait. "WTien he was a child he was 
encouraged to discuss the daily Scripture reading. 
On one occasion he expressed grave doubts whether 
David would have been eligible to the Society of 
Friends seeing he was such a man of war. Where- 
upon his parents concluded to confine the reading 
for a time, at least, to the New Testamient. The Quaker 
apparel, he used to say, sometimes saved the wearer 
from vain amusements. Once in New York, as he 
was passing a play-house he saw a man, too drunk 
to stand alone, holding on by the railing of the steps. 
As he turned to look at him the man said, ''Don't 
thee come in here, Quaker. This is no place for thee. 
I will report thee to Friend Jenkins and he will 
turn thee out of the Monthly Meeting.'' As an ex- 
ample of his keenness in literary criticism, take his 
comment on one of Browning's books, "Men and 
Women." ''It seems to me," he said, "like a gal- 
vanic battery in full play. Its spasmodic utterances 
and intense passion make me feel as if I had been 
taking a bath among electric eels. " To an old friend 
who was worried lest she should not have money 
enough to take her through her last sickness and 
bury her, he said, "Mary, did thee ever hear of any 

181 



one, bound on that last journey, sticking by the way 
for want of funds?" When he was a Free-soil can- 
didate for Congress Whittier said he got abused very 
badly by the newspapers and was even accused of 
ill-treating his wife ! 

With the insight of true statesmanship Whittier 
had seen from the beginning that the strength of the 
South lay in the fact that it was united in defense 
of slavery — the weakness of the North, that it was not 
united in defense of liberty. The problem was how 
to meet a united South with a united North. That 
required a quickening of the public conscience that 
could only come through a series of shocks and ap- 
peals as well as a gradual enlightenment of the un- 
derstanding. The logic of events was after all the 
great teacher. It was Whittier 's mission, taking every 
conspicuous event as his text, to speak the fiery word 
that should carry its meaning to the brain and heart 
and conscience of the country. It was, essentially, 
you see, the work of a great orator, but with this ad- 
vantage which the singing word always possesses over 
the spoken one when it flies level to the ears of the 
people and is fledged with the divine fire : It was more 
intense, more compact, more laconic, easier to be re- 
membered than any speech. It sung itself over and 
over in the heart, justifying again the old French- 
man's boast, ''Let me make a people's songs, and 
let who will make their laws." The nation's song 
is sure to be the nation's law in the end; and so it 
was with Wliittier's. When slavery was at last abol- 
ished by Constitutional amendment, and the joy bells 
were ringing, through the land, who had a better 
right to exult? He heard them ringing as he sat 

182 



in the quiet Quaker meeting and his great paean 
came to him then and there like an inspiration from 
on high. It came to liim as Longfellow said "The 
Wreck of the Hesperus" did to him, not in single 
words or phrases but in whole strophes and stanzas. 
How it still pulses and leaps with the ecstacy of its 
creation ! 

"It is done! 
Clang of bell and roar of gun 
Send the tidings up and down. 
How the belfries rock and reel! 
How the great guns, peal on peal, 
Fling the joy from town to town!" 

We cannot be too thankful that many years still 
remained to the great poet, years of honor and re- 
ward, years in which he gathered into his bosom 
a full ripe sheaf of love and veneration, — the late 
but happy harvest of that early painful sowing — 
years wherein he enriched the literature of his native 
land mth legend and song and hymn. Yet to those 
young, dangerous years he always turned as to the 
time when he had really lived. 

"Methinks the spirit's temper grows 

Too soft in this still air; 
Somewhat the restful heart foregoes 

Of needed watch and prayer. 
Better than self-indulgent years 

The outflung heart of youth. 
Than pleasant songs in idle ears 

The tumult of the truth." 

He owned that the political issues of later times 
seemed poor and small after the mighty ones wdth which 
he had been engaged. As he drew near the confines 
of the other world he looked forward to meeting 

183 



again his brave companions of that generous cause, 
often recalling them by name. "When Garrison died 
we can think of him as saying with the dying Arthur : 

"The sequel of today unsolders all 
The goodliest fellowship of famous knights 
Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep 
They sleep, the men I loved." 

If you wonde:" why I turn from his great achieve- 
ments in other lines to dwell so fully upon what he 
did as a reformer, I ask you to remember that I 
place the emphasis exactly where he placed it. The 
claim I make upon your gratitude is the only claim 
he ever countenanced or ever would. He was not the 
poet of nature — Bryant surpassed him there. He was 
not the poet of old-world culture and memories — there 
Longfellow was easily his master. He was not the 
poet of varied gift and manifold achievement — 
he was narrow beside Lowell. He was not the poet 
of mysticism — Emerson was there before him and 
will hold his throne long after he is gone. But he 
was the poet of human freedom, in a sense in which 
they never were, with a force and fire which none 
of them could ever hope to match. Here his inspira- 
tion was like a rushing, mighty wind, swaying him 
like a reed, possessing him, not possessed by him, 
leaping into forms which are not to be criticized as 
literature, which cannot be measured by any of the 
rules of art, but over-top all art and put all art to 
shame by their own spontaneous, elemental power, 
like revelations of the Deity. "Whittier was a voice 
that cried to sluggard conscience, ''Sleep no more" 
— a cry that split the ears of a cowardly and time- 
serving church — an indignation which wrapped his 

184 



frail body like a flame and gave his fragile arm the 
strength of His who scourged the money-changers 
from the temple courts. 

I should not have come here to speak of Whittier 
as a story-teller, as a song writer, as a delineator of 
New England life, or even as the mystic whose pray- 
ers and psalms are revelations of spirit power. I 
should have left his praise to be spoken by other lips. 
I came because I was born and reared in a home 
whose atmosphere was charged with electric sym- 
pathy with the anti-slavery cause. Its traditions are 
my earliest recollections, its advocates were my boy- 
hood heroes, and their faces were to my eyes as the 
faces of the saints and martyrs. In my ears the name 
of Whittier has always been sacred as the name of 
the great poet of freedom and humanity. 

But if he had ''the lion heart in battle," he had 
also "the woman's heart in love." In 1892, on that 
beautiful September day, as he lay dying, a beloved 
voice repeated in his ears his own sweet and solemn 
invocation : 

"When on my day of life the night is falling, 
And, in the wind from unsunned spaces blown, 
I hear far voices out of darkness calling 

My feet to paths unknown, 
Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant, 

Leave not its tenant when its walls decay; 
O Love Divine, O Helper ever present. 
Be Thou my strength and stay!" 

Tremblingly came from his lip.5 the half-audible 
words, again and again, as if he could not go without 
leaving us his message : ' ' Love, — ^love to all the world. ' ' 
We shall never forget that — that Whittier died leav- 
ing to us — ^yes, to every one of us, his love ! 

185 



THE MEASURE OF A MAN 

An Address at a Meeting in Memory of Philip Gerry, at 
the Public Library in Washington. 

It was one of the wisest sayings of Aurelius 
that ''the value of a man is the value of the ob- 
jects on which his heart is set." Who then shall 
estimate the value of the man whose heart is set, not 
on property or power or position or applause, but 
on those only objects of a rational devotion — the 
true, the beautiful and the good ? 

The test which the Imperial Stoic proposed 
is one that might have been welcomed by the man 
whose sudden taking-off has called this company of 
friends together. To those who knew him best it 
has seemed that any memorial to be appropriate 
and worthy of him must bear some reference to 
the pure and noble purposes for which he lived. 
The best memorial is the one which best fosters and 
forwards the aims and ideals of the lost leader; 
for thereby death is robbed of the fruits of his vic- 
tory, and the man, in his highest personality, — in 
his true spiritual potency — ^lives on. That, as I con- 
ceive it, is the thought that has moved his admirers 
to propose a tablet, which they hope may present 
a, has relief of Philip Gerry, to be placed in some 
alcove of this People's Library, where shall be 
brought together the books he labored so earnestly 
and lovingly to interpret and make familiar — the 

186 



richest heritage of oar race — the masterpieces of the 
English tongue. 

Mr. Gerry was a man of many moods and varied 
gifts, whose rich and ardent nature sought expres- 
sion in mcinifold activities. In the deep and grateful 
interest manifested by this meeting, nothing is more 
remarkable than the testimony it affords to the ver- 
satility of his gifts and the catholicity of his spirit. 
Singer, teacher, lecturer, critic, poet, lover of art 
and music, zealous advocate of every measure that 
could help to make the city where he dwelt the 
city beautiful, helper and inspirer of his fello\^Tnen, 
lover of life, "joy-giver and en j oyer" — such are 
the words and phrases that leap to one's lips to sug- 
gest his character and work. It is only when they 
are brought together that we realize the full stature 
of the man. Truly did he sing of himself 

"My heart is an ocean warm and deep 
Nor limit nor land can bound." 

If we may trust assurances that come to us 
from every side, here was a man who gave himself 
unstintedly to the plans and purposes of others — 
always more interested in what concerned you than 
in what concerned him — so that his defect, if we 
must name it so, was that he failed to duly rever- 
ence his ovm. finer and more splendid gifts by cul- 
tivating them to the utmost. But what a godlike 
defect it was; and how few of us wdll ever be ac- 
cused of such a failing! The river had so many 
wheels to turn, so many thirsty meaidowlands to 
water, it could not stop to spread itself into a broad 
and placid lake, to mirror the forest and mountain 

187 



in its depths and wear the moon and stars upon 
its bosom. 

But in his poems the man himself in his true 
nature, stands revealed. Here we can watch the 
movement of the deep currents that controlled his 
life. He was a lover of beauty — no lackadaisical 
lover, but a passionate and determined wooer: 

"For I would follow beauty as the sea 
Follows the clarion of the rising moon 
Roused from its uncouth caves forevermore; 
And where against my passion's liberty 
Bleak continents lie dull with rock and dune 
Plunge with incessant protest on the shore." 

He was a lover of country, and of those great 
ideals that make one's country something more than 
a stretch of territory or a heap of coin in a bank- 
vault. He was a lover of the world about him. He 
had felt the profound influences of nature — the awful 
silences that hush the soul. He was, as all true 
poets are, a lover of love. He was an idealist in 
daily life, set on keeping dewy-fresh the passionate 
devotion of his youth. He was a lover of life. He 
thirsted for all stimulating and strengthening ex- 
periences. He seems to have had some prescience 
of his own tragic fate and to have sung his own 
requiem with its eager opening prayer and its noble 
and uncomplaining close: 

"Oh, grant me years this great life to discover! 

I cry no curses on the world as seen; 

To me life looms majestic as a queen, ' 

And I plead lowly as a patient lover! 
I would not die: those myriad hopes to smother 

Of sowing fields soon breaking into green, 

Of golden months wherein to reap and glean; 

188 



To charge my tribute to some tired brotlier! 

\et let death come! Not less shall I have known 

The undisturbed rocks., the living rain. 
The grace of branches where the robins swing; 
Not less to me shall every day have shown 

The balm of joy, the perfecting of pain, 
Man's work, maid's love, and mother's minist'ring." 

Shall we not take him at his word? He had his 
work and his dreams, his love, his fireside and his 
friends; and these make life. He has lived his life 
and he was grateful for it, — grateful most of all that 
it closed without rust or stain. For that we have his 
ov/n sententious and prophetic words: 

"Whether I may or must, 

WJio knows? 
Whether a soul or dust, 

What shows? 
Myself I scan, and trust 

This rose. 

My life, may close 
Unstained by rust." 

I know how natural it is to tJiink of all that 
might have been; and yet, in that world of thought 
and aspiration where his days were spent, who knows 
whether his death can be counted even as an inter- 
ruption? Perhaps it is not so. When he bound up 
his poems for the one who loved them most, he 
drew upon the cover in severe and simple lines a Doric 
column, — not a half-built or broken pillar, but one 
unbroken dignity from base to capital. iTliat, I con- 
jecture, stood for the art he strove for and the life 
he would have lived. Let us think twice before we 
suffer grief or disappointment to substitute for that 
serene, aspiring emblem, a shattered column. 

189 



Rather let us lean against its foot our wreath of 
laurel, and, sharing his large faith in the ideal, 
leave the column, even as he drew it, complete. 



190 



THE PURITAN IDEAL 

A Response to that Toast at the Thirtieth Annual Dinner of 

the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, at the 

Academy of Music, December 21, 1909. 

Mr. President, Members and Guests of the New 
England Society in Brooklyn — The Puritan was not 
perfect. We should not choose him for the ideal 
man. The ideal man loves beauty as well as truth. 
He is charmed with love in the same degree that he 
is loyal to the truth. Love, truth, and beauty, that is 
the old trinity, never to be divided when we are speak- 
ing of perfection. The Puritan was blind to beauty, 
or at least tried hard to be, and we never think of 
him as an example of charity; but he did belong 
to truth; to her he was constant; in her service he 
was fearless. It is not that the Puritan made any dis- 
covery of truth; there was nothing new in his belief. 
It has been pointed out before, but it deserves to be 
remembered always, the distinction of the Puritan 
is simply this: that he acted on his belief. "What 
he believed about God and duty and destiny was all 
real, oh, terribly real to him! He accepted the con- 
clusion that followed, no matter how hard it bore 
upon himself. If it meant that he himself might 
turn out to be one of the lost in spite of all his 
prayers and efforts, very well, he was ready to meet 
it in the spirit of the Yankee whom Dr. Cyrus Bartol 
was fond of quoting: *'If God had made him to 

191 



be damned he guessed lie had made him so he could 
stand it." 

There is something impressive, not to say awe- 
some, in this unhestitating acceptance of consequences. 
We are not speaking tonight of that ideal man, in 
whom love, truth, and beauty were all blended, whose 
heart took in our whole humanity, and who goes 
down the ages carr3dng in one hand the knotted 
scourge with which he drove the money-changers from 
the temple and in the other the sweet lilies of the 
field. "We are speaking only of men, imperfect men. 
But we can see how men have come near perfection 
just in proportion as they have shown in their char- 
acters the qualities we are calling for the present, 
beauty, truth, and love. 

The Puritan had such a splendid basis in truth 
and the love of truth. When to that was added, 
as there was in some of them, in the Pilgrims, for 
example, the softer grace of charity, how winsome 
they became! And when to the stern love of truth 
was added the love of beauty, it was as when a 
rocky fortress is over-run with some blossoming, lux- 
uriant vine. Look at Milton — a Puritan if there ever 
was one — and yet not less an artist than a lover of 
the truth. Milton, in his early manhood, went to 
Italy. It was the Puritan invading the richest realm 
of beauty. He was thirty years of age. Already 
he had written Comus, The Hymn on the Nativity, 
Lycidas, and perhaps L 'Allegro and II Penseroso, 
besides a priceless handful of sonnets. In other 
words, he had already earned the right to be ranked 
with the few great poets of his race. Yet all he had 
done appeared to him of small significance when 

192 



set beside the mighty poem he was to sing. For 
with all the intensity of his Puritan nature he be- 
lieved tliat he had a mission. It was to be a poet, 
a priest of song, a prophet whose words were music, 
the heaven-voiced oracle of his age. He was not to 
rely on his native gifts alone, although he was well 
persuaded these were strong. He was to enrich him- 
self wdth all learning; he was to discipline himself 
"with every form of training; he was to be a mighty 
scholar and lay the culture of all times and peoples 
under tribute. And when all was won he w^as to 
bring the rich spoil of his labor to make glorious 
the work he would leave in verse, ' ' so written as that 
the world would not willingly let it die." He de- 
clared that no man should attempt to write of heroic 
things without being himself heroic. And so it was 
that the same purpose that sent Milton to Italy, 
sent him back again to England. Think of it! 
There he was, in the very home and haunt of beauty 
— and no man ever walked the earth more sensitive 
to her appeals — but when he heard from The Islands 
that the battle of the age was coming on he turned 
his face towards England, determined to have some 
part, however small, on the side that he believed 
w^as God's. In Italy itself, Catholic Italy, papal 
Italy, surrounded by friends and followers of the 
hostile faith, flattered and lionized by the greatest of 
the land, he made no effort to conceal his real 
opinions. Galileo was a prisoner at Florence. The in- 
quisition was at work. Assassination lay in wait for 
heretics. Milton himself was warned if he breathed 
a syllable against the Pope his life was not worth a 
farthing. Even Sir Henry Wotton, wlio gave liim 

193 



letters for his journey, enjoined him to keep his eyes 
open and his lips shut. Yet young Milton, taking 
counsel only of his own courage and conscience, laid 
down for his conduct this rule : Never to broach the 
subject of religion, but if Protestantism was assailed 
in his presence to defend it like a freeman. And so he 
did, even in the shadow of the Vatican. 

To contemplate Milton at this period of his life 
is to turn continually from one side of his nature to 
the other. The man of iron will is forming and 
hardening under the impressionable poet. If you 
have forgotten the troubadour lightness and grace 
of his spirit, recall that only five years before, he 
had w^ritten his sonnet To the Nightingale. 

"O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray 
Warblest at eve when all the woods are still." 

There is one pole of his character. The other is 
found in that tremendous sonnet ^Titten a score of 
years later — 

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold!" 

It is the prayer of a warrior. That is the Milton 
that went back to England. Italy, with all her 
sorceries of land and sea and sky, of history and 
art and letters, could not hold him. "Went back 
to teach school," sneers a biographer. Yes, or to 
do anything else that was honest and of good report, 
until the hour of greater things should come. Went 
back to his studies; went back to those long nights 
when he "out-watched The Bear," and to those winter 
mornings when, "before the sound of any bell woke 
men to labor or devotion," he rose and began his 

194 



arduous day with only the fire of his great pur- 
pose to Avarm his heart. Perhaps we shall never have 
a more consummate example of Puritanism in its 
flower. Here for once the love of truth and the love 
of beauty were made one. 

If we do often miss in the Puritan character 
that charining love of man and sympathy with hu- 
man failings we call charity, perhaps it is more often 
still that we miss in the philanthropist and the warm- 
hearted, impetuous reformer that rigid observance 
of the bounds of law and truth which was the very 
life of Puritanism. We need this too, if we are not 
to do more harm than good by our well-meaning ef- 
forts — we must learn never to trifle with the truth 
for any imaginable object. I am afraid we need to 
learn that lesson now. From the adoption of the 
Constitution to the ratification of the Fifteenth 
Amendment we in this country were engaged in the 
effort to make a strong central government. We 
succeeded. Some think the next generation or two 
may be kept busy in saving local self-government. 
But even that question, it seems to me, is of less im- 
portance than the question, how the constitution and 
laws are to be treated, and how changes therein are 
to be brought about. We sometimes hear it an- 
nounced that the constitution means one thing if the 
states do their duty and may mean sometliing 
else if they fail to do it. Now it is hardly necessary 
to say that certain powers are possessed by the 
national government to the exclusion of the states, 
and certain other powers are possessed by the states 
to the exclusion of the national government, while 
there is a third class of powers which may be ex- 

195 



ercised by the state unless and until Congress shall 
see fit to act; and when Congress does act its action 
suspends and supersedes that of the state. Now, 
speaking of this third class, it may be well said that 
Congress will act or not according as the states take 
or fail to take the needed steps. But that is not the 
proposition we have in hand. In that case the pow- 
er of Congress to act does not depend upn the failure 
of the state to act. Its power cannot be doubted. 
Whether it shall exercise it is purely a question of 
policy. But now and again the deliberate proposition 
is put forth that powers clearly and unmistakably 
reserved to the state shall be transferred to the na- 
tional government by construction. ''Constructions 
will be found" has become a favorite expression. 
Where found? Where, indeed, but in the desire of 
the prevailing party to have them found. The|n 
there is no limit to governmental action except in the 
will and desire of the prevailing party. We are try- 
ing to impress upon the people respect for law; but 
if words mean nothing, if even the constitution may 
be construed to suit the taste, how shall people 
respect the law? Nothing can be respected that is 
not straight-forward and sincere. It is not a ques- 
tion whether the constitution shall be amended, but 
how it shall be amended and by whom it shall be 
amended. It is, whether we have a constitution at aU, 
except in the national consciousness as it may 
chance to find expression at any given time in the 
triumphant party of the hour. Is not the man who 
debases words guiltier than the man who debases 
coin? Language is the currency of thought. De- 
stroy the meaning of words and you destroy the bonds 

196 



that hold society together. Beware how you dull 
the edge of words or blur the lines that separate 
ideas. The law-giver of old proclaimed: "Cursed 
be he that moveth his neighbor's landmark." But 
what is that to moving the landmarks that divide the 
great conceptions of law and power and duty ? From 
the beginning of history, you might almost say that 
the growth of the human mind is to be measured by 
its ability to discriminate. Said the Greek pliil- 
osopher, "He shall be as a god to me who can dis- 
tinguish and define." Is anything more important 
than to say what you mean and mean what you say? 
And yet how often men seem to forget it. We see the 
tendency in la^\', where juries sworn, in the most 
solemn form their consciences approve, to decide 
causes by the written la^^', feel at liberty to decide 
them by some umvritten law instead We see it even in 
religion, where we are sometimes bidden to repeat the 
ancient form of words and put our own construction 
on them ; as if anything in the creed itself could 
be more vital than the intellectual honesty which is 
lost when we play fast and loose with words. What 
we need nov/ is intense convictions. Wlien they come 
again they will make their o^^^l definitions, too sharp 
to be mistaken or confused. 

But what a necromancer Time is ! The Puritan 
himself has become romantic. The Puritan record 
is itself a poem. The voyage of the Mayflower is one 
of the epics of the race. It is one of the stories men 
love to hear and never can forget. It looms larger 
and larger as it recedes into the past and becomes a 
part of that high-hearted and romantic world that 
lays a spell at times on the imagination of us all. 

197 



The Pilgrim prow was launched upon a sea more full 
of peril and emprise than the Atlantic. It was 
launched upon the sea of song and story. It rides 
the ridges of that grey old deep that bore the barque 
of Jason, — around whose dim and undiscovered shores 
Odysseus made his nine-years' wanderings, — that sea 
of mystery and doom Columbus dared when his in- 
trepid, unprecursored ship sailed out from the bar 
of Saltes. The Puritan boat has joined the company 
of heroic keels that plough the waves forever. Dis- 
coverer, adventurer, viking, victor — thesfe are her 
mates and convoy, — all the bold and hardy ones who 
have gone out upon that watery plain whose barren 
furrows, the old singer said, no man may sow or reap, 
and brought therefrom the golden harvest of unfad- 
ing praise. The tale is in our blood. It has gone 
into the warp and woof of all our thinking. It has 
been woven in and out of the nation's web of thought 
and deed and dream until, today, if you could sever 
and draw out the threads it has contributed, the tap- 
estry would be left a marred and sorry pattern. We 
call ourselves a practical people, and other nations 
call us traders and mechanics; but the truth is we 
live in the ideal, and not for all the kings of money- 
making can bestow, would we give up one of our 
great traditions. And one — one of the greatest and 
proudest of all these — is that which makes us f easters 
at this board tonight. 

The sublimity of that tradition does not depend 
on heroic hardihood alone. It is almost a wrong to 
rank the Mayflower vdth those ships that sailed for 
fame or gold or empire or the sheer love of daring. 
It is not even that these men were laying the four 

198 



walls of a redoubted state. It is because they were 
impelled by principle. They went out into the 
wilderness to be alone with God. They cast upon the 
wind the things that made up -life for other men, — a 
seat beside the fire, the light of morning on the 
English hills, a resting place at last in sweet and 
hallowed ground under the ivied walls, — and chose 
instead the bare economy of a cold, unneighbored 
coast. They made proof by their deed how dearly 
they desired the things they prayed for. They had 
the faith that acts out what it holds. They really did 
believe. Indifference, which loves to masquerade as 
tolerance, had not benumbed their spirits. And when 
the principle they had espoused led them to incon- 
venience, hardship, exile, death itself, they ploughed 
on to the end. They did not run to cover. They did 
not seek the shelter of some cozy qualification. They 
never said, as we too often say, — as Rip Van Winkle 
says when, cup in hand he is about to break his pledge, 
— "We won't count this!" They were not oppor- 
tunists. They saw no opportunity except the open 
port of God's approval. For that port they steered 
and spread out all their sail. 

Such men there are in almost every time. We 
have them still. We owe them more than we can ever 
pay. We cannot even reckon up our debt, — it is too 
great. They do not always make the pleasantest 
companions. They have not always the mellow charm 
that makes some characters attractive. Softness may 
be excellent in an apple. It would be vicious in a 
sword. These men were swords, and it was necessary 
that they should be hard. I do not say that all men 
should be like them. I do not say that we should 

199 



imitate the best of them in every point. But this 
we have to learn from them, first to believe, and then 
to live as we believe. To plant yourself on some 
eternal truth and take the consequences — that is what 
it is to be a Puritan — to scorn the refuge of those 
large and comfortable exceptions that emasculate 
our principles, and not to be afraid of being called a 
doctrinaire. If we really do believe in democratic 
government — ^if it really is our faith that the people 
should conduct their own affairs — ^we shall not be dis- 
mayed b}^ partial and temporary failures. We shall 
not be frightened off by specters of ignorance and 
vice snatching the reins of power. Eather we shall 
lean hard upon the truth that we profess and make 
the necessary sacrifice to do away with ignorance and 
vice. If the grogshop, the brothel, and the dema- 
gogue strike hands to rule our splendid cities we shall 
see that the remedy lies, not in a return to any form 
of despotism, — the surrender back of power into the 
hands of one or of the few — but exactly the reverse, 
in a quickening of the public conscience and the re- 
turn of the many to the exercise of their abandoned 
power. 

Every people has in the last analysis exactly the 
government it deserves. Especially in a land like this, 
where everywhere, except in the city that is the seat 
of national government itself, the form of self-gov- 
ernment prevails, and the people of the community 
have only to put forth the power that they possess. 
That marks the progress we have made thus far. We 
have at least secured a form of government that en- 
ables the people, when their blood is up, to work out 
righteousness. Then let us hold fast to our institu- 

200 



tions; and let us have the burning zeal for what is 
right that held the Mayflower to her stormy course. 

But most of all let us have faith as they did. The 
Puritan had one unfailing light to steer by, — the 
Sovereignty of God. To him life was the same im- 
penetrable mystery it is to us. He could not see the 
beginning nor the end. He did not know what port 
his soul had left. He did not know what harbor the 
frail ship would make. The waters that he sailed 
were strange as sleep. The winds were fitful but the 
stars were true. 



201 



ON THE ARMENIAN MASSACRE 

Speech for a Mass Meeting in Music Hall, St. Johnsbury, 
Vermont, Sunday Evening, March 8, / 896. 

Why are we liere tonight? "What is Armenia? 
"What has happened there ? Why did it happen ? And 
what is it to us? If the Sultan has cut some forty 
thousand Christian throats, what are we going to 
do about it? And if we can't do anything, what is 
the use of talking? These are the natural Yankee 
questions on such an occasion as this. 

Armenia lies in the northeast corner of Asia 
Minor. It is about as large as New England, — 
ridged mth mountains wliich are roamed over by 
the Kurds; — at the foothills stretch the fertile valleys 
where the Armenians themselves have made their 
homes. That part of the region which has sprung 
into horrible prominence during the last few months 
consists of six provinces. Here dwell more than five 
millions. Of these more than three and one-half 
millions are Mohammedans. Then there are towards 
a million Christians, known as Gregorians. These 
belong to the ancient church of Armenia, said to be 
the oldest national church on the globe. Then there 
are some sixty thousand Protestants, converts and 
adherents of British and American missionaries. 
There are about the same number cf Roman Catho- 
lics. But these have not suffered. France protects 
them. And there are some two hundred thousand 

202 



Greeks, Clialdeans, and Syrians; but the Greeks are 
not touched — Russia takes care of them, it is upon 
the eight hundred and fifty thousand Gregorians and 
the sixty thousand Protestants that tlie wrath of 
Islam has fallen. That is to say, upon those who are 
supposed to be safeguarded by Great Britain, — upon 
those who were to have been benefited by the 
promised reforms. 

What reforms, and what need of reform? Need 
enough, heaven knows. Taxation! We growl about 
taxes when they reach two per cent. Look at 
Armenia. No doubt all Turkey is tax-ridden, but it 
is the Christian who has to pay for the luxury of his 
religion. For relief from military service he lias to 
pay, for every member of his family — wife, daughter, 
grandmother, cripple, babe, no' matter what — one 
dollar and fifty cents per year — a good start for a 
poor man. Then on his land, according to its value, 
one dollar to six dollars per acre, and one-eighth of 
his harvest — one bushel in every eight. If he has 
an orchard he pays twenty-two dollars, and one 
traveller — his name is given in The Review of 
Reviews — saw a poor man chopping down the solitary 
date tree before his door because he could not pay the 
taxes upon the tree. Then every eighth load of hay 
he draws into his barn pays two dollars. The barn 
pays one dollar to three dollars according to its 
cost. The cottage he lives in pays its tax. When he 
gets married he pays a tax for that, and tlien for 
the privilege of earning his living, and earning the 
money to pay his taxes, he must be taxed again, and so 
he pays a tax upon his occupation. But that is not all. 
There is the entertainment tax. Every Cliristian 

203 



must entertain for three days any Mohammedan who 
may come to his door and demand it. What a Para- 
dise for tramps! And what does the Christian get 
for his taxes ? "What do we get for ours 1 Protection, 
the right to share in the administration of govern- 
ment — all but the women and a few convicts. But 
the Christian subject of the Turk can take no share 
in government, can hold no office, cannot be a police- 
man — not even if he were an Irishman — and protec- 
tion is an unkno^Ti word. From the dictionary to 
be sold in Turkey the censor obliterates every sucii 
word as liberty, progress. There is no such thing in 
Turkey, and there must be nothing to remind men 
of it. Mussulmen hold the offices. Mussulmen ad- 
minister the laws. Mussulmen soldiers are quartered 
on Christian families, and the virtue of the daughter 
and wife are at their tender mercies. Such is the pop- 
ulation of the valleys. But above them hangs the 
dark cloud of Kurdish mountaineers, — wild, cruel, 
reckless, fanatical, ready to swoop down at any 
moment and bear off whatever spoil the regular au- 
thorities have left. 

Such was the condition of Christians in Airmenia. 
What were the reforms proposed? First, the Sultan 
was to protect his subjects from the rapacities of 
the Kurds. Second, he was to protect them from the 
extortions of the taxgatherer. Third, Christians 
were to hold offices in certain districts in proportion 
to the Christian population. Fourth, Christian and 
Mussulman were to be equal before the law. These 
were the reforms proposed, and the six provinces now 
desolate were the ones where these reforms were to 
be put in force. The Sultan had bound himself to 

204 



put those reforms in force in those six provinces 
last fall. He had bound himself by the treaty of 
Berlin, and now the powers were insisting upon per- 
formance. These reforms have not (;ome, and it looks 
as if there might be no Christian population to be 
benefited by them; and that is the intention of the 
Sublime Porte. For months before the tim^e came 
the Sultan had been arming the Kurds, — making 
the fierce, ungovernable, hordes a part of his army. 
The governors got their orders from Constantinople. 
Then when the hour struck the carnage began, — cold- 
blooded, deliberate, systematic. At noon the Moslem 
goes to pray. At the end of the noon-day hour the bu- 
gle sounds and the work begins. Too horrible to talk 
about; too sickening in ghastly details to be des- 
cribed! For four hours or six houi'S, the exact time 
set, the butchery and robbery go on unchecked; then 
it ceases, and if a Turk kill a Christian after time is 
called the blood is on his own head ; he is shot himself. 
Meantime the houses and stores have been pillaged, 
the men have been killed, the girls and women have 
been violated or hurried off to satisfy the lust of the 
harem, and every Armenian Christian capable of 
becoming a sharer in the government under the 
proposed reforms has been converted to Moham- 
medanism or put to death. And this is not what 
happened in one place only, but in towns and villages 
all over those devoted provinces — five hundred 
square miles devastated — from twenty-five thousand 
to forty thousand slaughtered. Yet any one might 
save himself by recanting — only blaspheme Christ — 
only pronounce the Moslem formula. Many did: 
many who would gladly have died the death of 

205 



torture live the life of hyprocrisy and shame for the 
sake of wife and children, whom they saved from 
a fate worse than death. Many have preferred to 
kill wives and daughters, and then die themselves. 

Meantime in his palace on the Bosporus sits 
the absolute monarch of this realm who gives the 
signal for the slaughter to begin and cease, writing 
to Lord Salisbury that he will see to it personally that 
the reforms in Armenia are carried out. The Sultan, 
the shadow of God on earth, Abdul Hamid the Second, 
or as he is better called by William Watson, Abdul 
The Damned. Such is Armenia, such was the need 
of reform, such was the promise of reform, and 
such has been the performance. 

Now, whose business is it — anybody's? What 
place does Turkey hold among the powers? At the 
close of the Crimean war, in 1865, she was under the 
practical dominion of Kussia. For a hundred years 
her great northern neighbor had exercised a protector- 
ate over the Christians in her borders. But in 1865 
a change was made. Instead of Russia alone the six 
great powers of Europe assumed that position. What 
is everybody's business is nobody's business, and the 
Turk has come off better since then, playing one of 
the powers against another with all his native cun- 
ning. 

The present Sultan, thrust upon the throne a 
score of years ago against his will, seems to have 
done his best according to his light, to hold his heathen 
realm together in security. He had a hard task on 
his hands. He found his treasury" empty, his people 
poor, nobody about him he could trust, and the 
Russian army almost at his door. The early dissolu- 

206 



tion of his empire was confidently predicted. He 
has held his own through all these years, and kept his 
foot upon the western shore of the Bosporus, by just 
such reliance upon the jealousies and selfishness of his 
European masters as today is saving him from ruin. 

What a commentary on the Christianity of the 
age ! Here we are in the last decade of the nineteenth 
century. Here are thousands of Christians being 
put to the edge of the sword, day by day, mth 
medieval barbarity, and no power in Christendom 
will lift its finger to stop the outrage. Have men 
really progressed as far as w^e thought? Have we 
any real right to look back with supercilious satis- 
faction upon the middle ages? There was a time 
w^hen a barefooted monk tramped over Europe and 
called every soldier in Christendom to arms. Tide 
after tide from as far west as the British Isles swept 
eastward to rescue the very grave where Jesus had 
once lain from the Saracen's dominion. Today there 
is no Peter the Hermit to speak — or is there no chival- 
rous Europe to hear and respond? Here lies Turkey, 
still on Christian borders. Here is the coveted city, 
mistress of two seas, the proudest-placed capital on 
the face of the earth — fit to be the capital of the 
globe — and over it shines the Crescent, not the Cross. 
And here within the limits of that heathen realm the 
followers of Christ are preyed upon like sheep. There 
to the north lies Russia, able to put three million 
fighting men into the field — and Russia pretends to 
worship Christ. There is Germany, the land of 
Luther and the Reformation, of education, and the 
art of printing, with the most massive and mobile 
land force in the world. There is France, war-like 

207 



France, fretting for the strife, bearing ever in her 
breast the dream of conquest, and the mighty memory 
of Napoleon — the France of the Revolution, the eman- 
cipator of man from the feudal yoke. Here is Italy 
with her great past and her glorious future ; and Aus- 
tria, strong in the present. Christian nations, every 
one, in name and creed ! And over there against the 
northern sea lies England, Cromwell's and Milton's 
England, richest of nations, mistress of the seas, 
holding her fleets in check like a leash of lions, ready 
and able to enforce her will. Eussia, Germany, 
France, Italy, Austria, England — the half-dozen 
powers that give law to the eastern world! And to 
these six great Christian nations the weak and tremb- 
ling Ottoman had pledged his word. The word is 
broken, but not a government stirs. What then? 
It is nothing new that governments should be coward- 
ly and selfish. But where are the people they pretend 
to represent; Where are the masses who have still 
a heart to sympathize with their kind ? Salisbury and 
the rest are but the figureheads of Christendom. 
Where is Christendom itself? 

And what is Christendom ? What is Christianity ? 
Not Romanism, nor yet Protestantisin — ^not any phil- 
osophy or creed or church, short of that universal 
church the Master himself foresaw exultingly when 
He rose to that breadth of prophetic vision where 
even now the eyes of His disciples blink as they try 
to follow His gaze — nothing short of that universal 
stream of spiritual life which, whatever may have 
been its obscure and secret source, has gathered 
strength along all the centuries and bears today upon 
its bright and growing tide the treasures of all the 

208 



past and the hopes of all the future, — all that makes 
the life of man worth living here today. That is 
Christianity; and they are Christians who have in- 
herited its inspiring history and cling to its trans- 
cendent promises. "Whenever in thought, in word, in 
act, in aspiration, the character of Christ shows 
itself, — there again as upon a rock the Christ founds 
his church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it. 

Speaking on this burning question here tonight 
I cannot accept from anyone a narrower definition of 
Christianity than that. I claim the right to speak 
for many in this hall, for thousands upon thousands 
in this land, whose names perhaps may not be found 
on any church roll, whose minds have struggled in 
vain ^\ith doubts, but whom the sad experience of 
life has led to the same conviction that loA^e is omni- 
potent, and to the same blessed hope of immortality, 
which is rooted and grounded in love. Wlio will try 
to part Christ's seamless robe? Who tonight will 
divide with names that universal church? Love is 
the life of the soul; and Christendom lies wherever 
the law of love struggles to find expression. This is 
Christendom, above it stands the Cross, and over 
against it stands this heathendom — Moham^medanism 
— woman in the harem, the child a slave, liberty an 
untolerated word, progress undreamed of, hearts 
steeled by fatalism, prayers for vengeance, conversion 
by the torch and sword; and over it all hangs the 
Crescent. Between these the quarrel lies. 

When governments prove false what should the 
people do? The people should speak as with one 
voice. From Italy to England, from the Atlantic 

209 



to the Pacific, should go up one cry of warning and 
condemnation. No government in the nineteenth 
century can resist that. That is why we are here 
tonight. It is little w^e can do alone, but we should 
do what everybody ought to do; and if every com- 
munity in Christendom would do what we are doing 
here tonight the Armenian Christians would be saved. 
The Turk would have to quit his throne. Salisbury 
pretends to speak for England, the self-constituted 
guardian of the unhappy victims, when he says that 
interA^ention might bring on a holy war, might bring 
all Asia to the Straits of the Dardanelles. But that is 
not England's real voice. She has spoken. Hear her 
word : 

"Ho¥/ long shall they be borne? Is not the cup 

Of crime yet full? Doth devildom still lack 

Some consummating crown, that we hold back 

The scourge, and in Christ's borders give them roomi? 

How long shall they be borne, O England? Up, 

Tempest of God, and sweep them to their doom!" 

If war should come, would not war be 
better than the cowardly peace of the past four 
months? But w^ar would not come. If the people 
would but utter that universal cry the hour demands, 
it would be enough. 

What is our duty in America? Here stands our 
country, the Tita^i of the new age, almost unarmed, 
defenceless — her sword unfleshed in old-world 
quarrels. It is not her treaty that is broken. But 
Americans have sent ten million dollars to Turkey, 
have two and one-half millions invested there in mis- 
sionary property. Our fellow citizens are there 
as teachers and pastors. We can insist that our gov- 

210 



ernment shall take every means to save tliese, and 
support the Executive in all he does to protect their 
rights; and we can give substantial aid to those who 
suffer there. 

Above all, let us not sleep in this great hour. 
Oh, for eyes to see things as they really are! — for 
liearts to appreciate the crises of life before they 
pass ! We are touched by the stories of old martyr- 
doms. Let us not be blind to the fact that we are 
^^itnessing today one of the greatest persecutions 
the Church has undergone. Let us not be so worldly 
and sodden that we cannot see the real heroism of 
those who died by thousands rather than deny that 
name w^hich stands for all they held dear and ail that 
we hold dear. We do not know why such things are. 
We do not know why Christ himself must hang upon 
the cross. We do not know why sin and evil are. 
But w^e do know that sin and evil have no remedy 
but in tliat same divine, unselfish, love which is the 
very lieart of our religion. We do ?iot know why for 
the iirst three centuries Christianity marked its w^ay 
by the rack, the cross, and the stake; but w^e do 
know that out of that agony and sacrifice have 
come the liberty and peace w^hich w^e enjoy; and 
we cannot but believe that the awL'ul suffering, the 
triumphant faith of poor, martyred, Armenia may 
yield to future times a like glorious harvest. But 
let us w^atch wdth her, and to some purpose. Let 
us give her all w^e can of sympathy ^;nd aid. And let 
us not b}' selfish lives deny the name of Christ, for 
if we do — if the people of Europe be not better than 
Their rulers — if w^e shrink from any needed sacrifice 
for them — Armenia may turn to us and say, as the 

211 



Lord said when he walked between the ranks of 
wailing women to be crucified: ''Weep not for me; 
weep rather for yourselves, and for your children." 



212 



A PHILANTHROPIST 

A Response to the Toast, **Our Country/' Made at a Dinner 

Given to the Honorable Simon Wolf, on the Seventieth 

Anniversary of His Birth, October 28, 1906. 

Our Country — what does that really mean? 
Civil and religious liberty — these are the twin glories 
of the land we love. 

Liberty is the sweetest word the lips of men have 
ever learned to frame. The race has funded all its 
labors, all its triumphs, all its sacrifices, in that single 
word. It holds all memories: there is not a tear that 
has been shed by agonized martyrs, there is not a 
drop of blood that has flowed from the side of dying 
heroes, that is not treasured in it. It holds all hopes : 
there is not a dream of happiness tJiat hovers on the 
horizon of the human mind today but was born of its 
inspiration and will be realized only through its 
workings. It means so much that we forget its 
meaning: we take, like careless and ungrateful 
children, blessings that were born of speechless 
anguish and have been cradled on the knees of pain. 

The history of the world is nothing but the story 
of man's struggle for a chance to be himself. That 
is the end of all his learning. ''You shall know the 
truth," said Jesus, ''and the truth shall make you 
free." Free — ^yes, even from the trammels and super- 
stitions which misguided followers of the Master have 

213 



piled upon his pure and simple teaching. The 
laureate of freedom sang, across tlie sea: 

*'A creed is a rod, 

And a crown is of night. 
But this thing is God — 

To be man with thy might, 

To grow straight in the strength of thy manhood and 

live out thy life as the light." 

When God made man in his own likeness he 
made it impossible that he should remain a slaA^e. 
If anything has been learned from six thousand years 
of social order, it is this: that there is no dungeon 
deep enough, there is no flame fierce enough, there is 
no rack cruel enough, to over-awe the spirit of a man 
determined to be free. You may bury him under 
mountains of oppression; you may wind him in the 
meshes of form: and ceremony as closely as the worm 
7/eaves itself in the cocoon; but his faith in himself 
Can move the mountain into the sea, and the awaking 
chrysalis will find its wings. 

The liberty of the one — that is monarchy; the 
liberty of the few — that is aristocracy; the lawless 
liberty of each — that is anarchy, and ends in the 
despotism of the strongest hand; but the liberty we 
love is the liberty of each, bounded always, and 
bounded only, by the liberty of all. It is liberty 
under law. It is the freedom of the race. Its goal 
is in that glorified humanity which is yet to be upon 
this earth, which wears upon its brow the simplest, 
saddest, tenderest of Hebrew names — the Son of 
Man. It is man himself come into his OAvn, man in 
his true dignity and glory, sitting on the right hand 
of power and coming in the clouds of every revolu- 

214 



tion. That is the vision that gilds the blackness of 
darkness in the storm that is gathering over Kussia. 
That is the leaven that is leavening the whole lump 
of Orientalism until China herself is almost ready 
to take her place beside the Western powers. There 
is only one thing worth living for, and that is to have 
a part, however small, in bringing that better time 
upon its way. When man shall come at last into his 
kingdom and look back upon the progress he has 
made, he mil not ask who was rich or who was poor, 
who was miglity or who was humble, who was wise 
or who was foolish according to the stupid standards 
of our day; he mil ask one thing, and one thing 
only, — ''Who fed and clothed and visited the hungry 
and naked and sick among my brothers? — who recog- 
nized that man was of royal lineage, ho^vever mean 
the raiment he put on, and reverenced the King in 
his disguise?'' 

The man in whose honor we are met tonight 
may safely present his life as an answer to that 
question. That is the reason I am here to pay my 
tribute with the others: that is why I call him for- 
tunate and blest. 

And now I hope Mr. Wolf will accept these few 
lines in honor of his birthday: 

"Call no man blest till his last day is done," 

The Theban counselled with uncovered head. 
And if life's blessing be a cloudless sun 

Which yet may be o'ercast, 'twas wisely said. 
But if our blessings of ourselves are born, 

And they that bless the world are ever blest, 
The day may keep the splendor of the morn 

Whatever storms may gather in the west. 
For thee, dear friend, who all thy life hast striven 

215 



To blow aflame the love-enkindling spark, 
If all the lamps be blotted out of heaven. 

Their going will not leave thee in the dark: 
Thou Shalt be lighted by the light thou givest. 
And so we call thee blest while thanking God thou 
livest. 



216 



THE OLD COMMONER: THADDEUS 
STEVENS 

An Address at the Annual Meeting of the Vermont Historic 

cal Society, Held at Montpelier, on the Ninth Day of 

November, 1906, in the Hall of the House of 

Representatives. 

When I was a boy there was a picture tacked 
up OP the dingy wall of my father's factory office, 
which I used to gaze upon with wonder and awe. 
It was the picture of an old man seated in a chair. 
I remember he had a club foot and seemed to be dis- 
torted with age and pain; yet the face was one of 
commanding power. There was scorn in the firm-shut 
lips; there was a defiant glance in the eagle eyes; 
and yet it was a face that even as a child I felt that 
I could trust. ''Who is that old man, father?" I 
asked. And, as nearly as I can remember, he replied : 
"That is Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania. He 
was born over here in Danville or Peacham. He was 
leader of the House of Representatives at Wash- 
ington during the war and afterwards until he died. 
They called him the great commoner, because he 
believed in the common people and fought like a tiger 
for the rights of all men rich and poor, black and 
white. He hated slavery with a hatred that knew no 
bounds, and he poured out on rebels and traitors 
all the vials of his wrath. When a^ou are older you 
can read and judge for yourself; but I tell you, he 

217 



was a great man, — that old Thad Stevens!" And 
so when I found I was to make this address my mind 
went back to that early impression, and I said to 
myself: ''I will try to draw the portrait of that 
strong old man, — that true son of Verm/ont, who 
fought as bravely and as mightily for the Union in 
the halls of Congress as any of her sons fought upon 
the field, and who finally breathed her own implac- 
able hatred of oppression into the three great amend- 
ments to the constitution." That is how it happens 
that I am speaking to you tonight of Thaddeus 
Stevens, War leader of the House of Representatives 
and Father of the Constitutional Amendments. 

Thaddeus Stevens was the spirit of Yerm/ont in- 
carnate. Even in his faults and his failings he was 
ours. He came as honestly by his defects as he did 
by his virtues. Imperious, irascible, he carried in his 
breast a heart as tender as a child's. When he 
was a child himself his mother had gone about amiong 
the neighbors nursing the sick through a terrible 
epidemic. Thad saw her sacrifice, and never forgot 
the lesson. Human suffering never failed to touch 
him to tears. His own infirmity made him especially 
solicitous for the halt and lame. He gave to his 
physician this order: "Doctor, whenever you come 
across a poor boy who has any trouble with his legs, 
do the best you can for him, and send the bill to me. ' ' 
Even to the careless and improvident he was kind 
and generous — that is, if he had anything himself. 
Sometimes his own pockets were empty. If that was 
the case he would never disclose the fact but would 
put his refusal to give on the ground that they were 
unworthy to receive, and give them a sharp lecture 

218 



on their shiftless ways. There was never a particle 
of sham piety about him. He hated cant with all 
the intensity of his nature. He had a near relative 
who was very punctilious to ask a blessing at every 
meal. Thad said to him: "Morrill, why don't you 
take some rainy day in the fall and bless all your 
garden-sauce at once, and save this everlasting repeti- 
tion?" Yet no one loved genuine righteousness in 
man or nation more than he, and no one gave him- 
self more resolutely to secure it. 

Nobody seems to remember much about his father. 
Some say he was a worthless sort of fellow and ran 
away. Some say he was killed in the war of 1812. 
We know he was a shoemaker and taught Thad to 
cobble. And tradition says he was a great wrestler 
and could throw any man in the county. But there 
is no need to inquire about his father. His greatness 
is all accounted for by his mother; and that is where 
greatness usually begins. She had four sons. The 
others were well and able-bodied — Thad was sickly 
and lame. You can guess which was the favorite. 
A poet once wrote: 

These mothers are like God — they love 
Ugly and fair alike. 

He made a great mistake: they love the ugly and 
misshappen far the best; on them they lavish their 
tenderest care; for them they are ready to labor and 
go without. "It is plain Thad can never make his 
way by physical labor. He must go to the academy 
and college, and if I have to work my fingers off he 
shall." And he did. Do you wonder that Stevens's 
heart always melted at mention of his mother? The 

219 



greatest iDleasure his prosperity brought him was the 
ability to give her the fine farm she wanted and the 
bright gold-pieces she loved to drop in the contribu- 
tion box. ^'Everything I have done, everything I 
am, I owe to my mother. " So he said. And when he 
died his will provided that her grave in Peacham 
should be carefully tended and its corners planted 
with roses, ''or other cheerful flowers" to the end of 
time. Oh, harsh and forbidding old man, we have 
found your secret out! Your sternness was only a 
mask to Idde the over-tender nature. How many of 
the softest hearts that beat put on this appearance of 
hardness for their own protection! Yfhen Jesus was 
on earth He saw through such disguises, just as He 
saw through the mask of hypocrisy and pretense the 
pharisee put on. He drew about him such men as 
this — ^men on whom the religious world of his day 
looked askance but whom the Son of Man saw to 
be kind and true of heart. Thad Stevens never be- 
longed to any church, but when the "ordained hypo- 
crites" of his time turned their backs upon the slave, 
"the least of these my brethren," Stevens went to 
him and gave him all he had. Whether he was a 
Christian or not, judge ye! Once, late in life, he 
was betrayed into a theological discussion. He 
showed such a profound familiarity with the subject 
that the listeners asked him if he had not at some 
period of his life studied for the ministry. Stevens 
parried the query with his customary snort: 
' ' Hump]i ! I have read their books. ' ' 

No doubt he had read them and read them 
well. That was a habit he had. He bent himself 
to his task with an iron will, and studied relentlessly. 

220 



He never meant that anything he set out for should 
get away from him — least of all an idea. He went 
through the academy at Peacham; he spent a term or 
two in the university at Burlington ; but he finally 
graduated from Dartmouth. That was in 1814. 
Then he went to Pennsylvania to teach school and 
study law. When he was ready to take his bar 
examination he found that the lawyers had passed 
a rule to keep him out. The rule required that the 
applicant should not have been engaged in any oc- 
cupation except the study of law during the years 
of his preparation. Stevens had been teaching 
school daytime and studying law nights. So he 
crossed over into Maryland and took the examina- 
tion there. Then he came back and settled down 
in Gettysburg where the great battle was afterwards 
fought. He had a right to practice in Pennsylvania 
then, being a member of the bar in Maryland. But 
it is one thing to have the right and it is another 
thing to get the chance. It was a long time before 
Stevens got a chance, and in the meantime he nearly 
starved. Again and again he was almost ready to 
give up. One day he said to an acquaintance: ''I 
can't stand it any longer. I have got to go away." 
The next day opportunity knocked at his door. It 
was a murder case. The old story. He was offered 
the chance to defend because the case was too poor 
for anybody else to touch. Stevens seized the chance. 
He could not win his case but he tried it with such 
astonishing ability that his reputation in that com- 
munity was made, and from that hour he never 
lacked for business. The plea was insanity. In 
those days it was a new-fashioned plea and very un- 

221 



popular; but Stevens believed thoroughly in the truth 
of the defence. Long afterwards he said he had 
defended fifty mtirder cases, and succeeded in every 
one but this; and yet that this was the only man in 
the whole lot that ought to have been acquitted. 

But Stevens found better business than defend- 
ing murderers. They were close by Maryland. Fug- 
itive slave cases were common and these enlisted 
every faculty of body, mind and heart that he pos- 
sessed. If he couldn't save the poor wretch in court 
he would buy him rather than let him be taken back. 
He saw the wicked, cruel system close at hand. Hte 
knew it in its most hideous aspect. His soul flamed 
wherever slavery showed itself. He brought to the 
borders of the slave states the spirit of the free hills 
and mountains of the north, and he never lost it 
as so many others did. 

I must tell you a story to illustrate his method 
in court. A Quaker miller in that part of Penn- 
sylvania had been very active in assisting runaway 
slaves to make their escape. He was put on trial 
for doing so in one instance, and the charge was 
that he had levied war against the United States. 
The case was tried before Justice Grier afterwards 
of the Federal Supreme Court. When the evidence 
was all in, the district attorney made an extended 
argument upon the question of law, reading from 
volume after volume to show what conduct might 
constitute the crime in question. Stevens listened 
in innnovable contempt, silent to the end. When 
the attorney had taken his seat he rose, hobbled over 
to the clerk's desk, leaned upon it, and looked Grier 
in the eye. "I have listened to this long and labored 

222 



argument with the gravest anxiety — not for my 
client, but for you. Because it is now for you to tell 
this jury whether a Quaker miller, white with the 
dust of his occupation, and riding on a bob-tailed 
sorrel nag, can be found to have been levying war, 
under sldj construction to be given to the consti- 
tution." And he sat down. He always knew when 
to sit do^vn. I sometimes think that is the hardest 
Jesson a lawyer ever has to learn. 

The constitution declared that persons held to 
service in one state, if they escaped into another, 
should not be discharged therefrom, but should be 
surrendered on claim of the owner. "Very well," 
said Stevens, ''then we will do it. But it doesn't 
say the rest of us shall turn out and join the hunt. 
It doesn't say that a man shall not have a trial by 
jury to decide whether he is a freeman or a slave. 
We will stand by the constitutior, but we won't 
stretch it a hair 's breadth in the interest of slavery. ' ' 
Case after case he defended for nothing; but he was 
no Hessian. He never let out his sword to the op- 
pressor. Those were the days that molded the great 
advocate of freedom. These were the experiences 
that burned into his soul the lesson the whole coun- 
try was finally to learn. 

Stevens didn't make the mistake so many young 
lawyers make — of going at once into politics. I 
thing it would trouble you to name a really great 
lawyer who did not give the first years of his pro- 
fessional life entirely to the law. Those are the 
days that determine what he is to be. With the 
sure instinct of genius, Stevens devoted himself for 
fifteen years to the mastery of his calling. In those 

223 



years he laid broad and deep the foundations of 
h's massive learning and acquired the accomplish- 
ment of his consummate skill. When he died Jere- 
miah Black declared that he had not left his equal 
at the American bar: and Jeremiah Black was a 
rival, a political opponent — himself accounted by 
many the greatest lawyer of Ms time. 

Stevens alwaj went to the heart of his subject. 
He always laid his finger on the sore spot of his ad- 
versary's case. He never wasted words. He had 
pondered well the Grreek saying, ''The half may- 
be more than the whole." He never took a note 
during a trial. He trusted his memory and his mem- 
ory never betrayed the trust. He flew at the decisive 
point with all the ferocity of his nature and fastened 
upon it with a grip that nothing could relax. Airs and 
graces he despised, but his words quivered with the 
intensity of his conviction, and his wit illumined the 
obscurity of his subject as the lightning lays the 
landscape bare beneath a midnight sky. His sarcasm 
stung like hornets and his drollery was indescrib- 
able and unique. Senator Morrill said he wasted 
wit enough every day to make the reputation of an 
ordinary humorist. The most mirth-provoking things 
he ever said were spoken with a face of unmoved, 
funereal solemnity. When he was leader of the 
House at Washington he could at any time put the 
chamber in a roar without an effort. If you read 
the record you will find, ''laughter," "great merri- 
ment," following remarks of his, v/hicli having lost 
the manner in which he made them have lost their 
whole significance and charm. After all, the great 
secret is personality, and no analysis can penetrate 
to that. 

224 



Stevens was forty-one when he first went to the 
legislature. Instantly he took his place in the front 
rank. The next year he was returned and took a 
hand in the great fight for free schools. I must 
linger a moment upon that. Pennsylvania furnished 
education for the rich at established rates and if 
a father was too poor to pay, he was obliged to make 
application for assistance on the ground of poverty. 
Class distinctions sprang up and sensitive parents 
kept their children at home rather than send them 
to be looked upon as paupers. This year the leg- 
islature passed an act providing for public educa- 
tion for rich and poor alike at the public charge. 
But this meant more taxes for the comfortable people 
who had no children of their own. A mighty reac- 
tion set in. The Pennsylvania pocket book was as sen- 
sitive as any other pocket book and a legislature was 
elected pledged to repeal the law. The senate did 
its part at once. Then the repeal bill came before the 
house. A test vote was taken on a preliminary 
question and showed a majority of thirty in favor 
of repeal. Then Stevens appeared upon the scene. 
He had been absent until now. The friends of free 
education gathered round him and told him it was 
useless lo oppose the tide. The mercenary wave had 
swept every thing before it. Now one man stood 
up against it. Stevens immediately moved to strike 
out the whole bill after the enacting clause and to 
substitute for it a bill of his own, strengthening the 
free school law. Upon this motion he made a speech 
which for immediate practical effect upon its hearers 
has never been equaled in a legislative assembly in 
this country. The house was packed. The senate 

225 



which had just passed the bill crowded in to hear 
this audacious argument against their action. 

His biographer says. ''Stevens then in the 
prime of life was erect and majestic. His form had 
outgrown the slenderness of youth. It was not yet 
bent with the heavy weight of years." A witness 
declares, ''he looked like a descended god." He was 
inspired by his great subject. He spoke with the 
fire of a Hebrew^ prophet. The house w^as electri- 
fied. It voted as soon as Stevens took his seat and 
carried his motion almost two to one — and the senate 
hurried back to its chamber, revoked its former ac- 
tion and concurred. To understand the magnitude 
of his trumph we must remember that the men whom 
Stevens convinced and persuaded were not merely 
opposed to his motion when he began : they had been 
elected on that very issue. They had been com- 
manded by their constituents to vote for the repeal. 
Yet such was the force of reason. — such was the 
power of righteousness in Stevens's speech, that every 
thing was forgotten save the mighty, elemental truths 
he brought to bear; and before many days Penjisyl- 
vania herself, clothed and in her right mind, was 
ready to praise and bless him for the service. So 
it is always. No matter what the hue and cry of 
the moment may be — no matter how the mtiltitude 
may be hurried away to do evil, the leader who 
dares to utter the deepest, noblest, truest word, he 
it is who is certain to be acknowledged in the end 
as the true voice and tribune of the people. Is it 
strange that Stevens always looked back upon tliis 
victory as the crowning achievement of his life? Of- 
ten he said that he w^ould be paid and over-paid for 

226 



all his labors, if a single child of destitution who had 
found the blessing of education through his help 
should come to drop a tear of gratitude upon his 
grave. 

The speech made liis name a household word 
throughout the state and Pennsylvania was proud 
to call him her son. But after all he was only an 
adopted son. He really belonged to us. I suppose 
you have all heard the witticism that was sprung on 
a banquet of Pennsylvanians. They had been praising 
their state ad nauseam as is apt to be the case at all 
state meetings. Finally a guest arose and said: ''I 
give you a toast — the three greatest Pennsylvanians, 
Benjamin Franklin — of Massachusetts, Albert Galla- 
tin — of Switzerland, and Thaddeus Stevens — of 
Vermont. ' ' 

A year or two after the free school victory 
a convention was called to amend the state consti- 
tution. Stevens was a member. It was a stormy 
time and Stevens was in his element. Every at- 
tempt to carry class or race distinctions into the 
organic law found in him a constant and determined 
foe. You can see how early and consistent a friend 
he was of equal suffrage. The constitution as the 
convention left it limited the right 1o white citizens. 
Stevens having fought in vain against the odious dis- 
crimination, utterly refused to affix his name to the 
document that contained it. And that was away 
back in 1837. 

About the same time he attended another con- 
vention. It had been called by the supporters of 
slavery. They thought the only \vay to save the 
Union was to put a stop to the anti-slavery agita- 

227 



tion. How Stevens ever managed to get a seat in 
such a body no one seems to understand, but he 
did it, and he succeeded in making it so ridiculous 
that there was nothing left for it to do but to ad- 
journ. Of course he was a champion of the very 
views the convention was called to denounce. Yet 
he made himself the central figure of the scene and 
by his mastery of parliamentary tactics, by resolu- 
tions, points of order, by wit, eloquence, sar- 
casm, he turned the whole movement into a 
rout. His own self-command was complete, his 
countenance imperturbable. His sallies kept the 
contention in alternate bursts of laughter 
and applause. Nothing was too personal or ad 
captandum for his use. A minister rose and bitter- 
ly denounced him; for bringing a firebrand into the 
convention. Stevens solemnly rebuked the reverend 
gentleman for indulging in personalities, gravely pre- 
tending to believe that by "firebrand" he was refer- 
ring to a member with flaming red hair who had come 
in with Stevens and sat at his side. Whereupon 
the convention nearly exploded. I cannot recall anoth- 
er instance where a single unsupported member, 
hostile to the sentiment of the assembly and gaining 
admittance for the sole purpose of defeating its 
object, has been able, by sheer force of personal ad- 
dress and management, to turn a serious gathering 
into a farce and utterly frustrate its whole design. 
Surely it was only the rarest combination of humor, 
eloquence and forensic skill that could make such 
a performance possible. 

After this he devoted himself a great deal to 
politics, and of course he was an intense partisan. 

228 



In the last years of his life, when he was leader of 
the house, he came in one day just in time to vote 
on a contested election case, and asked a member of 
his own party how the matter stood. "Not jnuch 
choice," he replied. "They are both damned 
rascals." "Very well," said Stevens, "Which is 
onr damned rascal?" Yet this was only dealing with 
things as he found them. Partisan as he was, he was 
wise and just enough to see the folly of determining 
such questions by a party vote and advocated another 
method. He proposed that they should be referred 
to a committee who should hear and decide the ques- 
tion judicially as is done in England. 

"Well, he devoted so much time to politics that 
when he was fifty years old he woke up one morning 
and found himself poorer than he was when he landed 
in Pennsylvania. He had been engaged in a large 
iron business and his partner had run him in debt 
$200,000. Stevens went to work and paid it up to 
the last cent. In the course of his life he made and 
lost three fortunes and yet left a comfortable estate 
at the last. He went to Lancaster and fought his 
way to the front in a new field. He drew young 
men about him as a magnet draws the steel filings. 
He had nine students in his office at one time. 
In polities the machine was against him but the 
people were for him and by a great majority tliey 
elected him to Congress. That was in 1849 anvl 
Stevens was fifty-eight years old. 

He had now reached that chamber where with 
the possible exception of John Quincy Adams he 
was one day to become the greatest figure that ever 
dominated its debates. But that supreme period 

229 



of his life was even then some fifteen years away. 
On his first appearance the little company of 
Freesoilers and Conscience Whigs rallied around him 
and adopted him as their leader. He was their can- 
didate for speaker. It was 1850 — the year of the 
second great compromise on the subject of slavery. 
The war with Mexico was ended. A vast region had 
been gained. New territories were to be orgaaized, 
new states were to come in. California stood knock- 
ing for admission — '' Calif ornia, " as Seward de- 
scribed her, ' ' the youthful queen of the Pacific, in her 
robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold." 
Congress, controlled by the slaveholders, hesitated 
to admit her. The Mexican war had been kindled 
and carried on to make more slave states and be- 
hold the first state in the new territory ready for 
admission had spurned slavery from her threshold 
and adopted a free constitution. New Mexico and 
Utah were to be given territorial governments. How 
about slaverj^ in these? Should it be provided for 
or prohibited? These and other great issues arose 
and at the bottom of each was the burning question 
of slavery. Thirty years before, Missouri had asked 
for admission as a slave state. She was finally ad- 
mitted but upon the express condition that tliro' the 
rest of that vast region purchased From France and 
kno^ATi as Louisiana, a line should be draT\Ti at 36° 
30' — and north of that line slavery should be forever 
prohibited. That was the famous Missouri com- 
promise of 1820. Now a new comx)romise was pro- 
posed by Henry Clay and in the end it was adopted. 
Among other things it provided fo»; a stronger fug- 
itive slave law. It took away trial by jury and 

230 



required the citizens of free states to actively as- 
sist in the capture and return of slaves. On this 
proposition Stevens made his first speech in Congress. 
It was a topic where he was at home and which roused 
him as no other subject could. For almost the first 
time Congress heard the voice of the unterrified North 
speaking the bitter, blasting truth on the subject of 
slavery where i'. had so long listened to the soft 
phrases of conciliation and persuasion. It was a 
new experience and I am still Yankee enough to 
think that it was wholesome. "Keep slavery where 
it is. ' ' he declared, ' ' and it ^\dll die of its o^mi poison. 
Let it spread and the whole body will become dis- 
eased. Surround it with a cordon of freemen and in 
twenty years not a single slave state but ^^ill have 
on its statute books a law for the gradual extinction 
of the system." With merciless sarcasm he handled 
the pretension that the negro was better off as a 
slave; that when he had tried freedom he had been 
known to return and voluntarily receive the yoke. 
That delusion held its ground even after the begin- 
ning of the war. One day a Union officer happened 
to meet a slave running away towards the north. He 
had kno^^ra him in the days of his servitude. "Why 
Sambo," he said, "why should you run away? 
You had a good home — plenty to eat and drink and 
the most considerate of masters!" "Well sah," 
Sambo replied, continuing liis flight, "yo' can put 
in yo' application — de situation am vacant." 

But Stevens was speaking in 1850, and he was 
a decade ahead of his time. The fugitive slave law 
was enacted. The compromise was adopted, and 
once more the slave question was put to sleep. 

231 



Stevens was not a man to compromise on a question 
of principle. He lost his interest in the politics of 
such a period and went back to the law. When he 
appeared in that chamber again it was on the eve 
of civil war. The years that had come and gone had 
been big with events. The nation had moved steadily 
towards freedom. If the south had kept the compro- 
mise of 1850 it might have held the scepter for an- 
other generation. But it was not in the slave party to 
rest on any ground it had gained. It struck out at 
every point. It repealed the Missouri Compromise, held 
sacred by the north for thirty-four years. It dis- 
puted the power of Congress to keep slavery out of 
the territories. It flaunted the Dred Scott decision 
from the highest seat of judgment. It strove with 
bullet and bowie knife to force slavery upon Kan- 
sas and with culminating impudence it proposed a 
revival oP the slave trade. Meanwhile a great pol- 
itical party had been born pledged to resist the fur- 
ther extension of slavery. The election of 1860 was 
almost at the door, when for the first time in the 
history of the republic "the slave was to choose a 
president of the United States." 

It was December, 1859, and Stevens was on the 
verge of three score years and ten. He had not 
expected to come to "Washington again. When he 
had retired a few years before he had delivered his 
valedictory; and now as he reappeared he sadly con- 
fessed the consciousness of failing powers. "More 
graceful would it be to retire — for us who find by 
repeated trials that we can no longer bend the bow 
of Ulysses. Fitting would it be to lay doA\Ti the 
discus W'3 have not the strength to hurl." It was the 

232 



new hope for liberty that nerved him to put on the 
armor — that marvellous political awakening — that 
"marshaling of the conscience of a nation to mold 
its laws." It was his opportunity — at last his hour 
had come. It had come to him in his age. If he had 
died before, he would have been forgotten. "I have 
no history!'' was his melancholy exclamation a few 
months before. "It is my life-long regret that I 
have lived so long and so uselessly. " It is as a gaunt, 
infirm and aging man but with the undying fire of 
liberty and genius in his spirit that he will be paint- 
ed for the times to come. He did not stand now as 
he stood in the days of his youthful vigor, fighting his 
way to the head of a hostile bar. He looked no longer 
as he looked on the day in the statehouse at Har- 
risburg when he swept house and senate by his 
impassioned speech and compelled them to do right 
by the children of the poor in Pennsylvania. He 
was nearing the end of a long and lonely life that 
had been childless and wifeless. Age had bent his 
frame. Infirmity had crippled his gait. Suffering 
had blanched his cheek. Thought and care had 
ploughed deep into his forehead. Strife and passion 
had left the mark of bitterness and scorn upon his 
sunk and withered lip. But with the clear vision of 
a prophet he saw that one of the crises of the world's 
history was at hand, and denying to himself the 
comfort and quiet of age, he gathered up all the re- 
mains of his ancient strength to strike his last and 
mightiest blow for freedom. 

The house was eight weeks in choosing a speaker. 
The question was whether the new Republican party 
could muster strength enough to organize and 

233 



control the body. One day a Democratic member 
got up and invited all who were opposed to the Re- 
publican program to meet in one caucus and act to- 
gether. That only meant that the rest should give 
up and vote for the Demjocratic candidate. Stevens 
punctured the proposal with one of his favorite 
weapons — ridicule. He said it made him think of 
the happy family described in ''The Prairie" where 
the owl, the prairie dog and the rattle-snake all lived 
in one hole. Stevens helped to keep the contest live- 
ly. Now and then he relieved the strain by his 
humor. For instance he rose, with a serious counten- 
ance to a question of privilege — sajdng that one of 
his votes had been criticized in the public press and 
he desired to make an explanation. He sent the 
newspaper to the clerk's desk and asked that it be 
read. The clerk looked at it blankly and replied 
that the paper was printed in Grerman and he could 
not read it. "Very well then," said Stevens with 
unaffected gravity, ''I will postpone my explanation 
till the clerk can read it." Finally the various for- 
ces hostile to slavery came together and the Republi- 
can candidate was seated in the chair. 

Let us come at once to December, 1860. Lin- 
coln has been elected, but the party that elected him 
is terrified by the consequences of its victory. Se- 
cession conventions have been called, and Congress goe£ 
down on its knees begging the South to come back and 
take everything it ever claimed. Both houses pass 
a constitutional amendment to make slavery perpet- 
ual in this government. Yes, two-thirds of house 
and senate voted for this horrible measure. I re- 
joice tonight that Stevens opposed every syllable of 

234 



the weak-kneed, cowardly proposition ''The time for 
compromises has gone by," he cried. "What we 
need now is courage, calm, unwavering courage that 
no danger can appall. We will faithfully execute the 
present compact, but if it be torn m pieces by rebels 
our next United States ^\ill liave no foot of ground 
a slave can tread — no breath of air a slave can ever 
breathe. ' ' 

Senator Dawes, then a member of the House 
from Massachusetts, has left us a striking picture of 
the scene. ''No one who saw it," he declares, "can 
ever forget it. All I can say of it or of him is tame 
without the inspiration of the time and of his pres- 
ence. It was the last of Buchanan's administration. 
Lincoln had been elected. The house resembled a 
powder magazine more than a deliberative assembly. 
His denunciation of traitors to their face was ter- 
rible, his exposure of the barbarism of their pre- 
tended civilization was awful. Nearly fifty 
southern members rose to their feet and rushed to- 
wards him with curses and threats of violence. As 
many of his friends gathered round him and moving 
him in a hollow square to the space in front of the 
speaker's desk opened before his assailants and stood 
iijuard over him while he arraigned the slavocracy 
in an indictment that surpassed even the great 
arraignment of Sumner. He was nearly seventy. 
On his form and voice time had made sad inroads, 
but he stood at that moment erect as at thirty-five. 
Calm' and self-possessed as a judge, he lashed them 
Into fury, and then bade them compose themselves 
at their leisure. The excitement beggars all de- 
scription and can live only in the memory of those 

235 



who witnessed it/' The long subserviency of the 
North was near its end. In that uncompromising 
tribune of the people the old domineering South had 
at last found its master. 

But the time had not yet come for the great 
radical to lead. A little longer the counsels of fear 
were destined to prevail. Bear in mind, state after 
state had already seceded. The president of the con- 
federate Congress had declared the separation per- 
fect and perpetual. A president of the new republic 
had been elected and his cabinet appointed, yet even 
then Congress hugged the old delusion to its heart 
that by surrendering all it might bring the rebels 
back — and it voted to surrender aJl. It was only 
when that full offer was spurned that the North 
sadly and reluctantly took up the gage of battle, 
which was not to be laid down until the principles 
for which the old commoner contended had been em- 
blazoned in the constitution of the Union and the 
constitution of every single state that had rebelled. 

You remember how cautiously Lincoln began; 
how tenderly he pleaded with the South in his in- 
augural; how slowly he moved until Sumter was 
fired upon and he knew he had a solid North behind 
him. On the 4th of July Congress met in answer to 
his call. Union mien were in the saddle now. In the 
House of Representatives there was no looking about 
for a leader. All eyes were turned on Stevens. 
James G. Blaine, by no means a partial admirer, de- 
clares: ''He was the natural leader and took his place 
by common consent." It was Blaine, also, who said: 
''He had the courage to meet any opponent, and was 
never over -matched in intellectual conflict." He 

236 



stood at the head of the committee charged with the 
duty of raising money to support the government 
and carry on the war as well as the duty of 
advising how it should be spent. It was exactly the 
duty Milton described in his noble sonnet to Sir 
Henry Vane — • 

Then to advise how war may, best upheld, 
Move by her two main nerves, iron and gold, 
In all her equipage. 

In three days be brought in a bill to raise $250,000,- 
000. Ho followed it with another appropriating $160,- 
000,000 for the array, and for the navy $30,000,000 
more. They passed at once. Then he bent himself to the 
task of raising a revenue to answer these enormous 
calls. With courage, with tact, with patience, he 
brought Congress and the country to his plans. Yet, 
burdened as hardly ever man was burdened, his eye 
sv^^ept the horizon, and his capacious mind was 
already busy with the outcome of it all. He seemed 
to see the end from the beginning. 

You remember the Crittenden resolution? It 
declared that the war was not waged for conquest nor 
to interfere with slavery, but only to restore the old 
order of things, and that when that end was accom- 
plished the war should cease. Senate and House 
hurried to adopt it. Stevens stood out almost alone 
against it. He did not believe in apologizing for the 
war or going about to explain it. "Ask those who 
made the war what is its object. The laws of war 
must govern our conduct now." He saw that the 
struggle was to be long and bloody. He had a vision 
of the tremendous price that must be paid — the awful 
sacrifice that was to be exacted. He did not believe 

237 



in the nation tying its hands by resolutions. If it 
should become necessary to free the slave or arm him 
against his master, if new conditions mjust be imposed 
to secure the peace hereafter, he would not pass a reso- 
lution now to stare us in the face. The resolution 
did pass, but a few months saw it broken. When the 
next session had to deal with the same matter Stevens 
moved to lay it on the table and his motion was sus- 
tained. 

Southern citizens were devoting their property 
to the rebellion. Stevens said ''Confiscate it." 
Masters were setting their slaves to build forts and 
dig trenches. "Set them free," said Stevens, "every 
man that is employed against us. If the war goes 
on the time will come when we shall arm' every rebel's 
slave to fight upon our side." The bill failed, but 
the day came when the House was glad to pass it. 

At the outset the South had one enormous ad- 
vantage. Her vast crops could be raised by slaves 
exactly as in time of peace. She could keep her 
fighting strength untouched and send the products of 
her plantations to buy the suppjies of war in 
European markets. Stevens would have snatched 
this advantage from her. Even before Lincoln was 
inaugurated he brought in a bill to do it. A year 
later he brought it up again. "Repeal," said he, 
"the laws creating southern ports of entry. Then 
foreign nations cannot enter them. It would be an 
act of war against this country. A nation has a 
right to close its own ports. It can do so by a law. 
That law is better than a fleet. But blockade them 
and you must keep everybody out by force. They 
have a right to enter if they can. More than all, if 

238 



you blockade them you acknowledge them as belliger- 
ents, and foreign nations will do the same." What 
would have happened if his advice had been heeded 
we shall never know. We proclaimed the blockade 
and Europe acknowledged the belligerency of the 
South. 

From the very beginning Stevens's mind was 
occupied mth the great question of reconstruction. 
Never doubting the ultimate triumph of our arms 
he w^as sounding the depths of the profound problem 
which, a few years later, was to engross the attention 
of the people and their leaders. He came to his 
conclusion early, announced it boldly, advocated it 
without ceasing and adhered to it until he died. 
Distrusted, doubted, opposed in the beginning, the 
logic of events confirmed it and it had to be accepted 
and adopted in the end. No dreamer, no speculator, 
no spinner of fine theories, but a practical man of 
affairs and the hardest-headed lawyer of his day, he 
wasted no time seeking to discover in the constitu- 
tion itself provision for the steps that must be taken 
toward the seceding states. The constitution did 
not contemplate an effort on the part of its members 
to dissolve the union. The power to preserve its o\^ti 
existence against a parcel of rebellious states was not 
to be looked for in its phrases but in the powers of 
war which pertain to every nation fighting for its 
life. The southern states had repudiated, spurned 
and spit upon the constitution; could they at the 
same time claim the protection of its terms? Stevens 
said, ''You cannot, indeed, destroy the constitution, 
but you can place yourself outside of its protection 
while you are waging public war against it." 

239 



Already he was grappling with the question 
that would face us when the war was closed. When 
the rebel states should be subdued would they have 
a right to be treated as back again in the old Union, 
under the old terms, bringing the same old sources 
of controversy with them, or would Congress have a 
right to prescribe the terms on wliich they should be 
received? Should they come back slavery and all? 
Should they continue to hold seats in Congress for 
themselves and for the black race too? Should they 
have power to repudiate the debt that had been made 
in putting their rebellion down? Should the loyal 
men of the South be liable to pay the debts of disloy- 
alty and treason? With a mind that pierced like a 
sword even to the dividing of the joints and marrow, 
he drove the question home. He saw that the whole 
ease turned upon one point. If the trouble was only 
a domestic insurrection it was to be suppressed by 
criminal prosecutions in the courts, and the insur- 
gents were entitled to the protection of the constitu- 
tion and the ordinary laws. But if it was a public 
war. then they were subject to the laws of war alone. 
He proved by all the oracles of the law of nations 
that when a republic is broken into two armed camps 
it is civil war, and while the war continues the two 
factions stand towards each other as separate and 
independent powers. Was this a public war ? 
Europe had acknowledged the belligerency of the 
South. We had acknowledged it ourselves. We had 
blockaded their ports, exchanged prisoners of war 
and sent flags of truce. It was not a mob, nor a riot, 
nor an insurrection, but war, public war, and the 
greatest civil war in history. While it lasted no 

240 



paper obligations could be relied upon by the South 
against the North, and when the rebellious faction 
should be vanquished it would be for the victor to 
lay down the terms of peace. So was he preparing 
the minds of men for the time when, conquered in 
the field, the rebel states should demand to be re- 
stored as of right to every privilege under the old 
constitution which they had renounced and defied. 

The shilly-shallying military movements that 
marked the early stages of the war —you can guess 
what sort of a critic Stevens was of these. Here is 
the way he described McClellan's march to Antietam: 
"The President ordered him to pursue the enemy. 
He started after them with an army of 120,000 men 
before him and marched that army at the rapid rate 
of six miles a day until they stopped and he caught 
up \sdth them!'' 

Throughout the whole struggle Stevens was bend- 
ing his best energies to remove the cause. No man 
knew better where it lay. ''Now is the time to get 
rid of slaveiy. There can be no solid peace, no per- 
manent union so long as it remains. Let our generals 
befriend the slaves that flee to them and arm them 
against the enemy. We shall never conquer until we 
adopt a new method. Southern soldiers are as brave 
as ours, their leaders as intelligent. The swamps and 
mountains will be their allies. The climate will kill 
our armies off. We keep a vast army at hom^ to till 
the field and run the factory; but every white man 
in the South can fight and not a single hand be missed 
from the plantation. The slave does not carry a gun 
but he is the mainstay of the war. Call him to your 
side and let him fight for his freedom. He tniII not 

241 



prove inhuman. I do not look to see the day when 
in a Christian land merit shall counterbalance the 
crime of color; but give him an equal chance to 
meet death in battle. Let him find equality in the 
grave — the only place where all the children of God 
are equal." For more than a week, against every 
form of obstruction and opposition, Stevens stood on 
the floor of the House and battled for negro enlist- 
ment. Finally the measure passed; and the humane 
valor of hundreds of thousands of black soldiers vin- 
dicated its justice and its wisdom. 

Slowly but steadil}^ Congress and the country 
moved towards the great goal, emancipation. First the 
House and Senate resolved that Federal aid be extend- 
ed to any state that would voluntarily adopt a measure 
for gradual emancipation. Stevens said it was ''the 
most diluted milk and water gruel proposition ever 
offered to the American people!" but he voted for 
it Then he moved to abolish slavery in the District of 
Columbia ; and it was done. Then he supported Love- 
joy 's bill prohibiting slavery in the territories, and 
it passed. Then Lincoln warned the rebel states that 
unless they laid down their arms by January first 
he would set their slaves free. January first came 
and he kept his word. From that hour the God of 
battles smiled upon our cause. The crest of the re- 
bellion broke on the field of Gettysburg and the long 
refluent wave of confederate disaster and defeat be- 
gan its ebbing course. The next day Vicksburg fell 
and the morning of deliverance began to break. But 
Lincoln's proclamation did not affect the slave states 
that were not in rebellion. There slavery still re- 
mained. His right to issue the proclamation at all 

242 



was certain to be questioned in days to come. There 
was only one way to set the matter at rest and that 
was by constitutional amendment. The North was 
ready for emancipation now. It was reached at last. 
The thirteentli amendment which makes slavery- for- 
ever impossible under the stars and stripes stands 
today almost in the ver>^ words m which Stevens 
cast his motion. 

Reconstruction! Never since the constitution 
was adopted had the statesmen of this country been 
called upon to face so grave a question. It had shown 
itself in Congress as early as the second year of the 
war. We gained a foothold in Louisiana and the 
attempt was made to erect a loyal government there. 
Congress and the President were not agreed. The 
war was yet to be fought out and so the question was 
put aside for the time being. When it came up again 
Lincoln was in his grave and a president of another 
sort was in his seat. Congress and Lincoln might 
have come together: Congress and Johnson never 
could. He began by threatening to hang all the 
rebels. Ben "Wade, you remember, ad\ised him to 
content himself with a baker's dozen and kindly 
offered to name the right ones. In six weeks Johnson 
had turned completely round and from that time on 
was the champion of the South. He tried to go on 
wdthout Congress. He said ''The war is over. The 
Southern states stand just where they did to start 
with. They have all and the same rights with the rest. 
There is nothing to do but repair their state machines 
a little and set them going." He called on the South 
to do it. The same men who had headed the rebellion 
were the ones that were to do the work. It was soon 

243 



done. New governments were quickly running in 
all the late rebellious states and senators and repre- 
sentatives were chosen. Now up to this time there 
was little sentiment in the North in favor of negro 
suffrage. But emancipation was another matter. 
The North could not forget that slavery had been 
the root and cause of the rebellion and it did watch 
wdth anxiety to see whether emancipation was to be 
a theory only or a fact. It did not have long to wait. 
As soon as Johnson's legislatures could put pen to 
paper they had the negro back in his chains. Under 
the thin disguise of vagrant and apprentice laws 
Ihey resumed over the black race a dominion as abso- 
lute and in some respects more cruel than the old. 
They did not even pretend to treat the races as equal 
before the law. They made one law for the white 
man and another for the black. Let me remind you 
of a single instance. If a white mlan broke his contract 
with a negro it was only ground for a civil suit. 
If a negro broke his contract with a white man he 
could be whipped with thirty-nine lashes or put to 
labor for a year. Such was the first fruit of the 
presidential plan. It did not taste well on the lips 
of those who had given their own blood, or blood that 
was dearer than their own, to make every foot of the 
republic free. 

Congress camje together. It was December, 1865. 
Would the new members be seated? Would John- 
son's new governments be recognized? Stevens sat 
with a great majority behind him, — the undisputed 
leader of the House. He wished to gain time. He 
wanted the President's policy to have a chance to 
bring its bitter fruit to ripeness before the contest 

244 



mth the White House should be on. Before the 
President's message could be received he put through 
his resolution for a joint comxaittee. It was to look 
into the condition of the Southern states and report 
v/hether they were entitled to representation in either 
House. Till then no member from an ex-Confederate 
state should be received. He was at the head of 
the committee (»n the part of the House. Before 
the session was two days old he had brought forward 
a series of amendments to the constitution. They 
would have changed the basis of representation in 
Congress so that the South would have no seats there 
on the basis of her black population unless she gave 
them the ballot. They forbade the payment of the 
rebel debt. They declared all citizens of whatever 
race or color equal before the law. These he said 
were the conditions on which the rebel states should 
be received. Even then you must notice, he did not 
propose to compel the South to adopt negro suffrage. 
He would leave it for her to say whether she would 
enfranchise the negro and have eighty-three seats 
or refuse to do it and content herself with forty-six. 
If his form of amendment had been adhered to this 
would have been the result. Unfortunately it was 
changed and under its provisions time has defeated 
the old commoner's purpose. Today nobody in the 
South pretends the negro is allowed to vote and 3^et 
the South holds nearly half her seats in Congress 
and wields half her political power by virtue of the 
very race that she excludes. 

On the 30th of April 1866, Stevens reported to 
the House the famous fourteenth amendment sub- 
stantially as we have it now, — that sublime guaran- 

245 



tee of freedom and equality worthy to be inscribed 
in letters of gold and sure to be revered by after 
ages with the Petition of Right and Magna Charta. 
How was it treated by these states that were demand- 
ing recognition? Every one rejected it. In some of 
the legislatures there was not a solitary vote in its 
support. If such was the temper ot the white people 
of the South, what hope was left that free govern- 
ments could be established there at all? Think for a 
moment what it meant, consider the attitude taken 
by the Southern states. What they said, in effect, was 
this: We will not consent that the war debt of the 
Union shall be paid. We reserve the right to make 
the. country pay our own debt when we get the 
power. We will not give a single black man the 
ballot ; yet we claim the right to send representatives 
to Congress for the black man as well as for the 
white. We have passed these laws annulling emanci- 
pation and we propose to enforce them. What are 
you going to do about it? 

Stevens said, "There is only one thing to do. 
Give every black man the ballot. No otherwise can 
we protect him in the freedom we have given him. 
Without him the Union has not friends enough in 
the South to organize loyal government. With his 
aid free constitutions may be adopted." 
It is easy now to say that suffrage ought not to 
have been conferred upon the black race all at once. 
Bui what could we have done? That was the condi- 
tion that confronted them, statesmen as wise and 
brave as ever sat in council. It was not a question 
between allowing free government to be set up and 
carried on by the white race on the one hand or the 

246 



black race on the other; it was a question whether 
there should he free government at all. It was a 
question whether the war had been won or lost. It 
was a question whether we were still in the clutch of 
the merciless power that had held free institutions 
by the throat for seventy years, — whether the dead 
had really died in vain, and whether government of 
the people, by the people, and for the people had 
not perished from the earth. Then it was that 
Stevens made his great plea for universal suffrage — 
the same ground he had taken in the constitutional 
convention for Pennsylvania thirty years before. It 
was the speech that to all appearances would be his 
last. He was white and haggard, worn and broken 
by his vast labors in the cause of freedom. There was 
little hope that another session would find him in 
his place. The house was hushed to hear his fare- 
well message and his words came with unparalleled 
solemnity and power. "I desire to make one more, 
perhaps an expiring, effort to do something useful 
for my fello^vmen. It is easy to protect the rich and 
the powerful; it is labor to guard the down-trodden 
and the poor, — the eternal labor of Sisyphus, forever 
to be renewed. I believe we must all account here- 
after for the deeds done in the body. I desire to 
take to the bar of final settlement the record I shall 
make here today on this great question of human 
rights. It cannot atone for half my errors, but some 
palliation it may be. Who is there that will venture 
to take this list with his negative seal upon it and 
unroll it before that stern Judge, who is the father 
of the immortal beings they have trampled under 
foot, — whose souls they have been crushing out ? ' ' 

247 



Congress was not ready for the m^easure then 
and it went over to the next session. Meantime a 
political campaign almost without a parallel in the 
history of the country had brought the North to the 
position occupied by Stevens. Johnson himself had 
opposed the fourteenth arojendment. Three of his 
cabinet had broken with him on the question and 
resigned. He had made his appeal to the country 
against what he called the tyranny of Congress. The 
chief humorist of the day said the question was 
whether political power should be concentrated in the 
Senate and House of Representatives or whether it 
should be diffused through the person of the Presi- 
dent. The country thought such concentration safer 
than such diffusion — especially as Congress was for 
saving tlie fruits of the war and the President was 
for throwing them away. Stevens himself had been 
too feeble to take any part in the <jampaign. As it 
proved, he had little more than a year to live. But 
he husbanded his failing strength and took his seat 
once more. He looked more like a spirit than a man, 
but he was the spirit of the united North now — a 
North that had come at last to the espousal of the very 
principles for which during more than forty years 
he had been as the voice of one crying in the wilder- 
ness. His theory of reconstruction was adopted. 
The Southern states were recognized as conquered 
provinces. They were divided into military districts 
under generals of the army charged mth the main- 
tenance of law and order. They were not to be recog- 
nized as states until they should ratify the fourteenth 
amendment and adopt constitutions in harmony with 
it In framing their new constitutions the blacks 

248 



must be allowed to vote as well as the whites, and 
their constitutions, when adopted, must wipe out all 
distinctions of race and color and guarantee equal 
i-ights to all. This was that momentous reconstruc- 
tion bill, which, passing House and Senate over 
Johnson's veto, became the law of the land, — the 
full, ripe harvest of the seed that had been sown 
m the proud ordinances of secession. 

The old commoner's work was done. And yet 
we are to have a final glimpse of him in another role, 
perhaps the most dramatic and impressive of all, — 
as he stood at the bar of the Senate to impeach 
Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, of 
high crimes and misdemeanors in office. It was 
February, 1868, and Stevens died in August. Already 
the hand of death was on him. Day after day daring 
the trial that succeeded he was carried to and from 
the Senate in a chair. Such was the tenacity of life 
in his wasted frame that he turned to the stalwart 
negroes who bore him and asked, ''Who mil carry 
me, boys, when you are dead and gone?" The rep- 
resentatives of the people had been roused to fury 
by Jolinson's long, bitter, obstinate resistance to the 
people's Avill. Finally they had voted to impeach 
him. It was Stevens who had checkmated him at 
every play. For three years, almost, at the head 
of a loyal and determined House he had thwarted 
him in every attempt to nullify the results of war. 
Again and again he had met and over-ridden his veto 
-^dth the constitutional two-thirds majority. It was 
fitting that it should be reserved for him to rise from 
his death-bed to bring to the bar of the Senate that 
unique and tremendous accusation. He did it like 

249 



the great lawyer that he was. ''Who can forget/' 
said Charles Simmer, "his steady, solemn utterance 
of that great arraignment? 1 doubt if words were 
ever delivered with more effect. They w^ere few but 
they will resound through the ages." 

When Congress took its recess near the end of 
July, Stevens was too weak to be taken to Pennsyl- 
vania. The others scattered to their homes. He 
f'tayed behind in Washington, and there in a few days 
he died. Undaunted to the last he said : " I am going 
to die in harness. I mean to die hurrahing!" A 
few of his Mn were by him. Two sisters of charity 
watched at his side. Two colored clergymen came 
and asked leave to say a prayer for him, and he gave 
them his hand. One of the sisters took a glass of 
water and tenderly baptized him, and like a little 
child falling asleep in his mother's arms that in- 
domitable spirit passed away. 

It was a sweet and fitting act to touch his rugged 
brow with the sign of our redemption; but I cannot 
think they would have missed it in the w^orld to 
which he went. For the motive that inspired Thad- 
deus Stevens's life was, in the profoundest sense, a 
religious one. He was not impressed by the signs 
and symbols of religion; he was not convinced by 
the creeds in which the subtlest intellects of two 
thousand years have expressed their belief in a spirit- 
ual world; he was not a mystic, lost in solitary con- 
templation of the divine presence; he was not a poet 
captivated by the beautiful mythology that gathers 
about any faith that finds a home in the heart of 
man. But religion speaks with a thousand voices: it 
has its own appropriate appeal for every human 

250 



soul. To Thaddeus Stevens the Son of Man came 
in the likeness of the poor and enslaved of his o\vn 
generation. In their unhappy faces, with their be- 
seeching black and bruised hands, He made to Thad- 
deus Stevens His appeal, and He did not appeal in 
vain. The consecration of a divine, unselfish purpose 
kindled his brain, and touched his lips with the lire 
of prophecy. It is a false ajid shallow view 
that looks upon this man merely as a fierce and bitter 
partisan, or as a keen, determined lawyer, or even as 
a sound, far-seeing statesman. He was something 
more than these: he was a witness to the 
truth. He was caught up by a breatii of 
that great spirit that is forever moving over 
the face of the human deep lifting now one and now 
another to be a leader and a light to the wandering 
and shipwrecked race. He felt himself upborne on 
the wings of eternal truth. The words he spoke were 
not his own but the words of justice, that cannot 
fail. Heaven and earth might pass away, but its 
words would not pass away. Apostle or martyr was 
never more persuaded of the necessity or the sanctity 
of his witness. That is what electrified his hearers. 
That is what gave him, on his great day at Harris- 
burg, the appearance of a descended god. That is 
what forced Senator Dawes to say of him: '* There 
were moments when he did not look like any other 
man I ever saw, and scarcely like a man at all."' God 
gave him to see with unobstructed vision the absolute 
equality in which all men stand before their Maker 
and in which they shall stand, one day, before the 
law. For that ideal he battled. And when he was 
near his end he pledged his friends to bury him, 

251 



not with the prosperous and powerful, not in any 
burial place that would exclude the race for which 
he labored, but in a certain small and obscure grave- 
yard where the dead of every class and color were 
received. And so they did. His very j^rrave stands as a 
witness to the principles he fought for in his life. 

To that humble, far-off resting-place our thoughts 
go out from this assembly mth peculiar tenderness 
and pride. We think of his boyhood of poverty and 
promise, of genius and deformity. We think of the 
mother whose unquestioning sacrifice made all his 
triumphs possible. We see him far from home, strug- 
gling for a foothold among strangers, forging his 
wa^ over every opposition to the first place at the 
bar. We see him defending the forlorn and helpless 
fugitive in the court of justice, freely devoting to 
the defence of liberty the skill and learning and 
eloquence which all the money of oppression could 
not buy; and when the law claims its victim we see 
him paying the ransom out of his own slender store. 
We see him standing up alone against an unjust 
mk)vement of the people and by the single mjglit 
of moral earnestness defeating it and putting it to 
shame. We see him refusing to set his name to a state 
constitution that presumes to draw a line between the 
sons of men according to the color of their skin. We 
see him at last in the halls of Congress facing the 
fiery and despotic South with a spirit as intense and 
uncompromising as its own. We see him returning 
to those halls again after years of silence, the infirmity 
of age upon his body but the fire of an exalted pur- 
pose in his soul, determined to die in harness now that 
the battle is really on. We think oi the marvellous 

252 



foresight tliat took in every element of the problem 
and had it solved before his fellow statesmen even 
understood its terms. We hear him. day by day and 
month after month expounding his principles, pre- 
paring the way for the measures that he knew must 
come, waiting with patience till the country was ready 
to adopt his yiev/, and then pouring the hot lava of 
freedom into the mold of unassailable and enduring 
law. We think of his wit, liis eloquence, his logic, 
his skill, the courage that never wavered, the resources 
that never failed, all dedicated to a lofty and un- 
selfish plan — the iron wdll that nothing could bend 
or shatter, and underneath that stern forbidding 
countenance the heart as tender as a child's! Then, 
indeed, we are eager to stretch out our hands and 
claim him. Sleep sweetly in your unfrequented 
grtive among the poorest of God's creatures! If no 
sculptor has given your rugged figure to the eyes of 
men, if no poet has sung your praises, if the dark 
despairing multitudes for whom you strove ne^^er 
knew of their benefactor, you would not care for 
that. Your work still stands in the very frame-work 
oP free government where you imbedded it. Your 
spirit still lives in millions who accept mthout a 
question the principles you vindicated against the 
greatest odds. And here among the hills where you 
were born, where in your youth you girded up your 
loins and went forth to battle, men still love liberty 
and hate oppression, — still cherish that grand ideal, 
absolute justice and equal rights for all, that made 
your life heroic. You were worthy of Vermont, and 
Vermont is proud of her son. 



253 



A CAPITAL OF CAPITALS: THE FUTURE 
OF WASHINGTON 

Introductory Address, Washington, D. C, February 27, 

1913. 

Fellow Members and Guests op the Committee op 

One Hundred : 

I am not here to introduce the distinguished 
speaker, but to perform as best I ma;r' the task, at once 
tempting and difficult, of saying a lew words by way 
of preface to the real address of the evening, which 
we have all come to hear. 

After nine years in Washington, I find that the 
love and admiration for this inspiring city, which I 
brought with me when I came, have grown deeper and 
more rich, and that my hopes and wishes for its 
future have taken larger and more definite outline 
as I have come to see more clearly wliat the national 
capital may one day be. This ideal which has slowly 
fashioned itself in my own mind I offer you, — not be- 
cause it is mine, but because I venture to think it may 
be much the same as that of multitudes of others, and 
for that reason entitled to attention and respect. 

The capital of a nation, though it may lie, as 
ours does, at the level of the sea, must be in a very 
true sense, a city that is set on a hill and which cannot 
be hid. In the nature of things, it draws to itself not 
only the eyes of its own people, but, if it be the capital 
of a great nation, as ours is, the eyes of the whole 

254 



world. If the national domain be vast in extent, 
belting a continent, embracing different zones, reveal- 
ing almost every variety of climate and production, 
with corresponding differences in ways of life and 
material interests, while at the same time it is one by 
virtue of a common national spirit and ideal, these 
facts will only make more impressive, as they certain- 
ly will make more necessary, that sentiment of awe 
and majesty that should surround and invest the 
seat of governmental power. And if this magni- 
ficent domain be the home of nearly half a hundred 
separate republics, each having its own history and 
traditions, its own pride of place, subordinate only 
to those of the nation, — ^not a few of them great 
enough in individual wealth and power to constitute 
nations by themselves, and having each its own capi- 
tal, often beautiful and beloved, — then it is all the 
more essential that this capital of capitals should be 
no mean city, but worthy in every respect to domi- 
nate them all. 

The natural sentiment of men in these conditions 
will tend to make reverend and august the capital of 
such a country, wherever it may be placed and what- 
ever its separate history may have been. But if in 
fact it be almost coeval with the republic itself, if it 
have been founded by the idolized Father of his 
Country and bear his name, if it have been for 
upwards of a century the scene o<^ historic events 
that have determined the fate of the nation, if it 
swarm with memories of statesmen and heroes and 
martyrs, if no one can look upon it \^ithout recalling 
a titanic struggle for its possession which marshaled 
men by the million, sprinkled the whole land with 

255 



blood, and finally gave that land, an Lincoln declared, 
' ' a new birth of Freedom, ' ' then I say It may well be, 
and surely irust become, a Mecca for the feet of 
patriots as long as the nation shall endure. 

Whether we will it so or not, it mil become a 
symbol, — a symbol of the great republic whose visible 
throne is here. For imagination is not dead and can- 
not die; and the w^ay of men in ail ages is to make 
sjrmbols, and to cling to them when they are made. It 
is wisdom, then, to see that the symbol shall be worthy 
of the love and veneration it expresses, that it may 
in turn strengthen love and deepen veneration for the 
reality which it shadows forth. Who shall say that 
the multitudes who come and go shall not bear away 
in their bosoms a loftier conception of their country, 
a juster pride in its history, a firmer faith in its prin- 
ciples, a brighter hope for its future, and a more 
steadfast purpose to make that future what it ought 
to be, if they behold here a city which is the outward 
and visible sign of the inward and spiritual life of a 
free and advancing people? Not a dollar is wasted 
that is carefully devoted to that use. When you 
throw^ a noble bridge across this ri\er it will be an 
arm to draw the South and North together. It will 
not only symbolize re-union, it will serve to make re- 
union surer and more lasting. For the masses of 
mankind learn by what they look upon even more 
than by what they hear or what they read. When 
Ihey look upon that structure they will feel the im- 
pulse of the fraternal love that put it there. Their 
hearts will tell them what it means. It will need no 
inscription. They will see North and South clasping 
hands, in the shadow of Washington 's monument and 

256 



undei' the fatherly eyes of LincoJn, who loved aud 
would have saved them both. 

To serve its highest purpose in this kind the city, 
then, must be a work of art, — not a loose gathering of 
various works of art, but one work. How can this 
be, without observance of the first principle of art, — 
unity? Unity of ideal and unity of design — these 
we must have, unless we are to be satisfied with a 
mere collection of separate and inharmonious at- 
tempts. That is the idea, that is the truth, that has 
united us and called this Conunittee into being. Upon 
the success of our endeavors, or the endeavors of 
others inspired by the same principle, the success of 
the enterprise depends. To have some part however 
small in securing the realization of this ideal is a 
privilege and will be a joy and pride to us and to 
those who shall come after. 

And now, without longer standing between you 
and the pleasure you anticipate, I yield the floor to 
our most welcome guest, whose wide experience in 
other lands, whose knowledge of this country and 
appreciation of its institutions, together wdth liis 
deep and f^enerous interest in Washington itself, so 
eminently fit him to be our guide m such a field, — 
Mr. Bryce. 



257 



FOUR BROTHERS: A GRAVE IN ARLING- 
TON 

An Address Delivtred at the National Cemetery, Arlington, 
Va.,May30, 191/ . 

''Not a day passes over the earth" — so the great 
novelist begins his masterpiece — "bat men and women 
of no note do great deeds, speak great A\^ords, and 
suffer noble sorrows. ' ' This little monument is erected 
to four brothers who sleep under this sod — four 
private soldiers in the Civil War. All were wounded in 
battle. All died, sooner or later, cf their wounds. 
One lived till 1869 and the last survived the conflict 
by more than forty years; but after he was dead the 
surgeon's loiife revealed the truth. Not many years 
ago, on a ploughed field in Virginia, that had been 
fought over in the dreadful struggle, a buried shell 
was turned up to the light of day — and it exploded, 
carrying destruction with it. For forty years the 
unspent force of war had slumbered in its womb, 
sullenly waiting for its bloody birth. So here, sooner 
or later, the fatal seeds of war bore fruit and now at 
last the harvest is complete. 

Fifty years have passed away since their young 
blood was stirred by ''the silver voices of heroic 
bugles," and their ingenuous hearts answered to the 
all -compelling voice of duty. Fifty years! If we 
would understarid what the war meant to those who 
suffered by it, we should not deal with numbers and 

258 



statistics, we should hear the story of some single 
family like this. In 1801 it was a happy, devout and 
loving household in the blue hills o[ Pennsylvania — 
father and mother, six sons and three daughters. 
Their first home was a log cabin. But they have 
outgrown that, and from the clay of their owli farm 
the bricks are molded and burned for the new, 
large house that shall shelter them, as they imagine, 
for many years to come. Jacob Logan is the oldest 
son, bearing his mother's maiden name. He is twenty- 
three. John Lyle is the second, named after his 
father. He is twenty. Then there is Nelson at seven- 
teen and Joseph at sixteen, and there are two still 
younger. Jacob, the eldest, enlists in August, 1861. 
All the family go to the county-seat to watch his regi- 
ment march away. It is the 100th Pennsylvania 
Volunteers. But that is not the name it goes by. 
Lieutenant General Scott had named it before it was 
recruited. They were to be, and were, "The Round- 
iieads. " They were mustered from those counties 
south of Pittsburg, settled in large numbers by Crom- 
wellians and Covenanters. Just a year later, Jolin 
enlists and joins his brother. Nelson and Joseph beg for 
leave to go. Father and mother will not consent. But 
in February and March, 1864, when the same regi- 
ment is being refilled to make good the gaps of war. 
Nelson and Joseph join, and the four brothers are 
marching under the same regimental colors. Of the 
two brothers younger still, one attempts to enlist and 
is rejected ; the other is too young even to be offered. 
It was in truth the Roundhead regiment. 
Through four years of hard campaigning, from Port 
Royal to Petersburg, it proved itself worthy of its 

Z59 



name. It was a fighting, Bible-reading regiment. On 
the evening before the battle of CoJd Harbor, Jacob 
and Nelson read their Testaments together. The next 
day Jacob was killed and Nelson received the 'dread- 
ful wound he carried to the grave. That was the 
summer of 1864 — the fearful slaughter-time when 
Grant was grinding his bloody, obstinate way 
through the Wilderness. Nelson was carried to a 
farmliouse, where surgeons did their best but gave 
no promise of recovery. After a week the order came 
that the wounded should be moved to Washington. 
The ambulances w^ere reserved for those who might 
recover. Nelson was considered beyond hope. He 
was placed in an empty supply wagon, and started 
on his ride over a road of corduroy. He begged to 
be taken out and left behind to die in a corner of the 
fence; but finally, his body resting on a sack of oats, 
his shoulders against the stay-chain, and his arms 
around it, he contrived to ease the jar of his twenty 
miles' torturing journey till he reached the steamer. 
At Washington he lay in the Lincoln Hospital, where 
Lincoln Park is now. His mother somehow got the 
news. She took the train (she had never seen a train 
before) and came to Washington to find her boy. She 
finds the hospital, but the soldiers standing guard 
will not admit her. She sinks down upon the curb- 
stone weeping. A stranger sees her distress and finds 
a way for her to gain admittance. She sits beside 
her wounded son till night comes on, when in spite 
of all entreaties she is sent away, and goes sadly back 
to her home among the hills. At that very time 
Joseph, the youngest of her four soldier boys, is lying 
in a hospital in the same city, the Mt. Pleasant, dying 

260 



of homesickness as much as from his wound; (if he 
could only have seen his mother for an hour!) but 
this she never knows till long years after. Joseph 
died in a few days and was buried somewhere here 
at Arlington in July, 1864. Jacob was buried at Cold 
Harbor, where he fell. AVhat became of John, the 
second son? He was shot through the lungs when 
the mine exploded before Petersburg — was taken 
home and lived till 1869, and was the only one of 
the four to be buried in the old liome churchyard 
there. Here at last, gathered from their various 
resting places, they are all sleeping side by side. 

That is the sad proud story of the McCulloughs. 
It claims our admiration and our tears, not because 
it was peculiar, but because it was not. In how 
many, many homes the story was repeated — mothers 
weeping for their first-born and would not be comfort- 
ed Family after family lost all. It is only when 
we take the individual instance to our hearts, and 
then multiply its agony into thousands and tens of 
thousands, that we can even begin to understand. 
This very regiment that numbered, from first to last, 
two thousand and fourteen, lost eight hundred and 
eighty-seven in dead and wounded. Two hundred 
and twenty-four of its brave boys were killed out- 
right or died the lingering, torturing death of Rebel 
prisons. To read the roll of its battles is to sum- 
mon up all the mingled shadows and splendors of 
those awful years. It sounds like a summary of 
the war itself: Manassas, Chantilly, South Mountain, 
Antietam, Blue Springs, Knoxville, The Wilderness, 
Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and many 
more. Lying in trenches, storming the batteries, 

261 



walkng with bare and bleeding feet on frozen ground, 
burning witii fever, fainting with hunger, marching 
and remarcMng, from Charleston Harbor to the en- 
virons of Vieksburg — they knew all the hardships, 
all the vicissitudes, all the defeats and triumphs of 
that unexampled war. What were they fighting for 
and what sustained them? That is the secret and 
and the lesson we would learn. These boys com- 
prehended the moral issues that lay beneath the war. 
They knew that they were fighting for the truth. 
They understood. They knew it was not merely a 
quarrel between two sections. It was not really the 
North against the South. It was freedom against 
slavery. It was the schoolhouse against the auction- 
block. It was a nation that had finally pledged 
itself to liberty for all, against a confederacy that had 
solemnly declared that slavery should be perpetual. 
They knew that the South had written it into her 
constitution that no state should ever have the power 
to abolish slavery. They knew that between such a 
government and a union of free states, side by side 
upon this continent, there never could be peace. 
They knew that Lincoln was right when he said it 
must be one thing or the other — the country would 
be all slave or all free. There was only one way, 
and that was to fight it out. If they shirked the 
task they knew another generation would have the 
work to do. They adopted Washington's old motto 
— ''Thorough." They determined to fight it to the 
finish; and they did. They did not underestimate the 
foe. They knew there was plenty of courage on the 
other side — plenty of endurance, plenty of sincerity. 
But they knew by their faith in truth and justice 

262 



and by the pure prayers they learned at their mx)th- 
er's knee, that their enemies were wrong and they 
were right. They never doubted that the God of 
their fathers, who had given them the victory at j\Iars- 
ton ]\Ioor and Naseby, was on their side. 

They had seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred 

circling camps; 
They had builded Him an altar in the evening dews and 

damps; 
They had read His righteous sentence by the dim and 

flaring lamps — His truth was marching on! 

And now these four are sleeping here where so 
many thousands of their comrades are resting on their 
ariiis never to be startled by the bugle-call. They 
sleep in the soil of Virginia, the chief state of the 
old Confederacy, but, thank God! they sleep in Union 
soil, — in sight of the Capital they helped to save, by 
the side of the war-storied river that now in all its 
windings sees no South, no North, but one country, 
under one flag, consecrated to the truths they fought 
for, dedicated forever to Libert}^ and Law. 



263 



THE NEGRO AND THE NATION 

Chairman's Address at the National Conference to Consider 

the Status of the Negro, at the Public Meeting in 

Cooper Union, New York City, May 31, 

1909. 

I believe in the fatherhood of God and the brother- 
hood of man. Not the brotherhood of white men, 
but the brotherhood of all men. 1 believe in the 
Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence, 
and I stand by the Constitution of the United States, 
including the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. 
That is my creed and my platform. 

Some questions are difficult because they are 
so complicated. Others are difficult because they 
are so simple. Duty is apt to be difficult, and the 
simplest duty may yet be the hardest. I assum'e 
that human nature is substantially the same in 
every climate and under every skin. I assume that the 
white people of the South are in themselves no better 
and no worse than the white people of the North. I 
assume that their opinions and conduct are what ours 
might have been if we had come under the same in- 
fluences and conditions. But such considerations do 
not settle the question, "What is right? 

The broad subject of our conference is the negro 
and the Nation, not the negro and the North, not the 
negro and the South, not the negro and the white 
man, but the negro and the nation. The questions 

264 



it brings up are national. They cannot be settled 
by any one race and still less by any one section. They 
concern the whole country and they must be answered 
by the country as a whole. If the Constitution is not 
binding in South Carolina it is not binding in New 
York. If it cannot protect the black man it cannot 
long protect the white. If fifteen states can set aside 
the Constitution at their pleasure there is no Con- 
stitution worth the name. If a state can nullify one 
clause it can nullify the whole. If a state can, in 
a single congressional district, deliberately exclude 
three-fourths of its eligible voters from the polls on 
the real ground of color, and yet insist upon hav- 
ing them all counted for the purpose of holding a 
seat in the national assembly, it can perpetrate a 
fraud on every legally constituted congressional dis- 
trict in The United States, and there is no security 
for representative government in any corner of the 
land. If any class or race can be permanently set 
apart from and pushed do^n beloAv the rest in pol- 
itical and ci\dl rights, so may any other class or race 
when it shall incur the displeasure of its more power- 
ful associates, and we may say farewell at once to 
the prin'dples on which we have counted for our 
safety. 

"We are confronted not by a theory but by a fact. 
That fact is the deliberate and avowed exclusion of a 
whole race of our fellow citizens from their con- 
stitutional rights, accompanied by the announcement 
that that exclusion must and shall be permanent. 
It is not that the negro is ignorant, nor that he is 
poor, nor that he is vicious, but that he is a negro. 
Even when he is good and learned cuid rich, he must 

265 



still be excluded because be is still a negro. Tbat 
is the proposition, and that it is which makes it the 
duty of all who dissent from such a doctrine to make 
their dissent known and to make it uncompromising 
and clear. 

If the Southern states were only taking the 
ground that all voters white and black alike must 
possess certain high qualifications in property and 
education, the situation would not be what it is. 
Such restrictions might result in the exclusion of the 
great mass of colored men as it would result in the 
exclusion of large numbers of the white. Yet we 
might well wait for the effects of time. If any 
indication were to be found that the South is look- 
ing forward to a day w^hen the colored man shall ex- 
ercise his political rights, and that it is providing 
some process, no matter how slow and gradual, by 
w^hich that result may be attained, it might be our 
patriotic duty to hold our peace. But when no such 
indication is to be found, when no encouragement 
is held out that the negro shall ever have any, even 
the slightest, part in the government under which 
he lives, patriotic duty forbids that we should be 
silent. When will there be any change — why should 
there be any change — as long as the whole country. 
North as well as South, acquiesces in the present 
order ? 

But there is a still deeper consequence involved. 
If laws can be made and enforced which e\ery child 
knows were intended to deprive and do in fact de- 
prive millions of American citizens of the riglits 
guaranteed them by the Constitution of their coun- 
try, it is vain to call on men to reverence the law, and 

266 



when we swear to the Constitution we swear to a 
rotten reed. ' ' When the Son of Man cometh shall He 
find faith on the earth ? ' ' That was the old prophetic 
question. Not faith in the mystic spiritual sense, 
but fides, good faith, common honesty. When multi- 
tudes of men take an oath which on their own con- 
fession they have no thought of keeping, the public 
conscience is debased and the bond that holds society 
together is well nigh dissolved. The grossest barbar- 
ian that ever shed human blood to solemnize his 
oath has had some form of words that would bind 
his darkened conscience, and to break which he 
counted as damnation. It was left for the nineteenth 
Christian century to exhibit the spectacle of thous- 
ands of civilized men taking upon tljeir lips an oath, 
in the most solemn form of their religion, which 
they themselves publicly and shamelessly admit they 
never intended to observe. From such a position 
it is but a short step to verdicts on liie unwritten law 
and trial and execution by the mob. When the Con- 
stitution is defied it can make no essential difference 
whether that defiance is expressed in Tillman's 
coarse and brutal words, ''To hell with the Constitu- 
tion," or is couched in some honeyed, euphemistic 
phrase that appeals to Anglo-Saxon prejudice and 
pride. In either case the thing is done. 

It is a fitting day for such a subject. It has 
become the fashion of recent years to treat the Ci^dl 
War as nothing but a political contest, ignoring the 
tremendous moral issues that alone justified its sac- 
rifices. But read Lincoln's second inaugural, where 
he spoke as the propliet of his people and uttered the 
•deep secret of the conflict. It wiU not do to shut 

267 



our eyes to the real causes and results of the war — 
especially now when Northern indifference and South- 
ern injustice strike hands to keep the black race in 
a new bondage as helpless and hopeless as the old. 
As a member of the white race and turning for the 
moment to white men, I say that our race will de- 
serve any calamity the presence of the black race 
may bring. We brought it here by theft and force. 
We owed it liberty and we gave it a chain. We owe 
it light and we give it darkness. We owe it oppor- 
tunity and we hedge it round with restraints. We 
owe it the court house and we give it the lynching 
tree. We owe it an example of order and self-con- 
trol; we give it an example of lawlessness and hate. 
We are sowing the wind and if we reap the whirl- 
wind we shall have ourselves to blame. 

The strong imagine they have a mortgage upon 
the weak but in the world of morals it is the other 
way. We complain that virtue and intelligence can- 
nou be safe in the neighborhood of ignorance and 
vice. God means that it should be so. So does he 
take bonds from the mighty to do justice by the 
weak. Shame on the race that holds in its hands the 
wealth of the continent and carrie:-^ in its brain the 
accumulated culture of the centuries and yet, refus- 
ing to lift ignorance and vice to the level of enlighten- 
ment and virtue makes that ignorance and vice an ex- 
cuse for the denial of human rights. Never until the 
white man has spent his last surplus dollar and ex- 
hausted the last faculty of his brain in the effort 
to lift up his weaker brother — never until then can 
he stand in the presence of infinite justice and com- 
plain of the ignorance or the criminality of the black. 

268 



It is really a contest between caste and equality, 
— a contest as old as the world and possibly as per- 
manent. The spirit of caste is nothing else than that 
self-worship that is fostered and gratified when it 
can look down upon another. The secret of caste 
is inordinate self-love and pride. It can find no 
welcome in the heart where the Son of Man is made 
at home. Underneath every political or social phase 
of the subject lies the profounder phase which makes 
it a question of duty and of true religion. If we 
can do nothing else, we can at least, on tliis day 
of sacred memories, purify our ideals, and test our 
conduct by them. "We do not make our ideals, our 
ideals make us. America did not choose the great 
doctrine of equal rights — that immortal truth chose 
America. It has molded her from the beginning; it 
will mold her until the end ; or if it cannot it will cast 
her off with the -s^Teckage of the past and take up 
some other nation that shall be found worthy. 

There is a power that has been working here 
from the beginning. It will be w^orking here when 
you and I are gone. It is the power whose purpose 
is that all men shall be free. Various races have at 
various times flattered themselves that they were a 
chosen people. But if history shows anything it 
shows that a nation is nothing but a tool in the 
hand of The Almighty. If if serves His purpose it is 
used. If it breaks in His hand it is thro\\Ti away, 
and another is chosen in its stead. If this nation 
has any mission it is to make the Declaration of In- 
dependence good — that and the three great amend- 
ments to the Constitution which were the necessary 
outcome of the sublime pledge of 1776. It is true 

269 



those amendments were adopted in a glow of idealism. 
But so was the Declaration itself. It is true they 
have not been lived up to any more than the Dec- 
laration was lived up to in the first seventy years of 
the Republic. But now as then and at all other times 
the test of our institutions, both of their power to last 
and of their worthiness to last, is simply and solely 
this : Do they serve to keep the rights of men sacred 
and secure? 



270 



RUSSIA AND THE JEWS 

A Speech at the Mass Meeting in Belasco Theatre, Wash- 
ington, D. C, January 21, 1906. 

Mr. Chairman : — The events which have called us 
together stand by themselves. There is nothing to 
equal them in the records of the race. To find any- 
thing worthy of comparison you must pass by St. 
Bartholomew and the Inquisition, and go back to the 
Dispersion, the Captivity or the bondage in Egypt* 
They constitute one of the highest mountain-peaks 
of human wickedness. When you and I have lain 
in our forgotten graves a thousand years, it will 
still loom dark against the horizon. The eye that 
gazes across the centuries will be arrested by it as 
one of the colossal crimes in human history. We are 
standing in its shadow, and we are awed by its very 
magnitude, as if we stood in the presence of a 
malignity that knows no bounds. 

The world is used to slaughter ; it has grown cal- 
lous to carnage; it can even exult in battle where man 
meets man and tights to a finish ; but it has never grown 
used to murder. Hardened as it is, the blood of a 
hundred thousand murders turns it pale. Cities 
have been sacked before; childhood has been trodden 
under heel, womanhood has been violated and homes 
ha^'e been laid desolate before. These terrors follow in 
the train of * * glorious war, ' ' and nations have learned 
to expect them as a part of the great price to be paid 

271 



for victory and peace. But Eussia's six hundred 
desolated villages and towns were not in the track 
of war; they were at peace; they were under the 
protection of the ciAdl power. There is nothing new 
in riots and in mobs. But eyewitnesses declare — the 
world is compelled to believe — that these mobs did 
their work under the eye of Cossack and police, 
while the guns of the state Avere tiained not on the 
rioters, but on their victims. Russia is in revolution. 
An empire struggling to keep its seat cannot be ex- 
pected to maintain the order of tranquil times. But, 
for the most part, these towns and cities were never 
in revolt. The murdered thousands were unoffend- 
ing and defenseless. Neither slayer nor slain had 
lifted hand against the men in power. The great 
body of Russian Hebrews did, indeed, long in their 
hearts to be free; they had made known their desire for 
a free constitution. That was their only crime — that 
and the fact that they were Jews. Race hatred is 
as old as the race; but why this sudden and unex- 
ampled fury — why this uprising, as if at a signal, 
in a hundred communities at once? There is only 
one possible answer. The spite and vengeance of 
a discredited autocracy is being visited upon them 
because they alone, among the lovers of freedom, are 
unable to resist. Upon them it is easy to turn the 
tide of old prejudice and superstitious hate. Let 
the rapacity of the people be glutted out of their sub- 
stance — then perhaps it may forget to turn against 
the powers that be. ** Desperate diseases demand des- 
perate remedies," and Russian tyranny, driven to 
the wall, is stri^ang to drowTi the revolution in a de- 
luge of Hebrew blood. In Odessa, where eight thous- 

272 



and Jews were murdered, Baron Kaulbars was in 
conunand of sixty thousand troops, and refused to 
interfere. A thousand students armed themselves for 
the defense of the Jews. Then the garrison did in- 
terfere, yes, surrounded the students and held them 
prisoners until the massacre was over. 

Race hatred ! A Russian to hate a Jew ! Think 
of it. On the walls of his vast cathedrals he carves 
the figures of his twelve holy apostles — and every 
one of them a Jew. He enters and prostrates liimself 
before the picture of a Hebrew child in the arms of 
a Hebrew mother; he mutters a creed that declares 
a Jew to be the Son of God, the Saviour of the 
world — then he goes out and kills the first Jew he 
meets, because he is a Jew ! 

The Hebrew race is entitled to the admiration 
of the world for great and peculiar virtues; but if it 
w-ere black as prejudice can paint it, its sorrows would 
deserve our sympathy today. In Southern Russia, 
and just across her borders, six million Jews have 
made their home — one-half of all that dwell upon the 
globe. Were those who have died already offenders 
above the rest, or is the massacre to go on until all shall 
perish or be scattered to the winds ? 

The rulers of Russia — are they responsible for 
these outrages? Shall we shut our eyes to what the 
past quarter of a century has brought to light? The 
charge is not made against the shepherds of a free 
people. It is made against a despotism that still 
dreams it can impose upon the twentieth century the 
forms and fetters of the twelfth. It is brought 
against a caste that mil give up nothing of its feudal 
claims except in obedience to the dagger or the bomb. 

273 



Wliat can you expect of a land that puts its ruffians 
in office and its heroes in prison? What can you 
expect of a land that year after year sends the flow- 
er of its young manhood to grow gray in Siberian 
dungeons — and for what? For cherishing the very 
opinions which every man in this audience would 
die to maintain. What can you expect of a govern- 
ment that flogs women naked in the public square 
if they betray sympathy with their martyred brothers 
by a whispered word? 

Those are the governors to whom Israel must 
look for protection. That is the upper millstone. 
Underneath lies the dull and heavy mass of Russian 
peasantry, blind, brutish, supertitious — debased and 
degraded by a thousand years oi: oppression — the 
ninety millions whose awakened fury may yet sweep 
Czar and Cossack from the earth. That is the nether 
millstone. And between th^e two Russian liberty, 
the intelligence and aspiration of the new Russia, 
may be ground to powder. That Is the plan. 

There are calamities so great that they melt all 
races into one family. '^One touch of nature makes 
the whole world kin." So does an assault like this 
upon the rights of man. It melts do\ATi every barrier 
that divides us. We are no longer Russian or 
American, Jew or Christian, we are only men. In 
such a time as this we must either deny our manhood 
or we must speak. Governments may still be bound 
by other ties; but the people in a moment like this 
are bound by no ties except the ties of kindness and 
justice, w^hich God Himself ordained when He made 
of one blood all nations of the earth to serve Ilim. 

What good will our denunciation do? What 

274 



does Russia care for the opinion of mankind? 
Friends, the time has gone by when any man or 
monarch could defy the united indignation of the 
world- The cords of mutual dependence are too many 
and too strong. Let every community in Christen- 
dom do what we propose to do tonight and Russia, 
yes, even Russia, would be able to read the writing 
on the wall. Let us assume that the rest of the world 
wdll do their duty; but if all the rest should hold 
their peace, let us do ours. 

Sir, as I said in the beginning, this is a crime 
that future ages will take note of. The men of after- 
time mil have their own opinion of it. They mil not 
judge it by what we say of it, but they will judge 
us very largely by the way we treat it. Never fear, 
the glorious liberty-loving future will know how 
to damn such a deed as this without our prompting. 
But when the student of history shall turn the pages 
of the past to find what part our country took, will 
he not ask such questions as these? ''England, Ger- 
many, Italy, France, these sent from their capitals 
a cry of protest. Had the great free nation of the 
West no word for an hour like this? Then as now," 
he will say, ''from the bank of the Potomac soared 
the sublime monument to the Father of his Country ; 
then as now, the sacred sepulchre at i\Iount Yernon 
was visited by pilgrims without number; on every 
side lay the old battlefields of freedom; and there at 
the capital were gathered from more than forty 
states the representatives of a free and mighty people. 
"Was there no voice from the grave of Washington? 
Was America heartless or afraid to speak?" Sir, 
it is not the Jews of Moscow and Odessa, it is we and 



our children who have most at stake in the answer 
to that question. This is the place and this is the hour 
to answer it. 



276 



THE MAKING OF VERMONT 

Delivered in the Hall of the House of Representatives at 

Montpelier, October 24, 1900, on the Invitation of 

The Society of Colonial Dames. 

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Society of Coloni- 
al Dames, and Invited Friends : "We may well count 
ourselves happy in the time and place of our meet- 
ing. "We are here in the very heart of the Green 
Mountain land — Verd Mont, the Frenchman called 
it, a phrase that was to become on English-speaking 
lips the most beautiful name for the most beautiful 
state in the whole new hemisphere, Vermont. Just 
dver there rises our stateliest lanchnark, Camel's 
Hump, earlier and fitlier called the Crouching Lion, 
— the sununit whose majestic contour arrested the 
gaze of Samuel Champlain as he sailed up the blue 
midland water almost three centuries ago. Below 
us winds the Winooski, that main highway of war 
over which by summer and ^^dnter, in birch canoe or 
on moccasin and racket, the Canadian savages red 
and white sped on their bloody errands, to cross the 
mountain-di^dde and fall with tomahawk and torch 
upon the pioneers along the Connecticut. Almost at 
our feet is the spot where, a hundred and twenty 
years ago this very month, one such fiendish band 
overtook two hunters from Newbury, believed their 
story that the great-valley settlements were up-in- 
arras to meet them, and, turning aside from their 
premeditated course, swooped with fire and knife 

277 



down White River upon Royalton; and here a few 
days later they repassed through the rustling fallen 
leaves of October, leading their sixteen pale-face cap- 
tives to be sold in the Montreal market ''for a half- 
joe apiece." We are met in the capital of the state. 
Here, after its long wandering and fifteen temporary 
resting places, the ark of government found a temple 
at last; and here for well nigh a hundred years the 
lawgivers of the commonwealth have wrought the 
sentiments, purposes and ideals of the people into 
plain and wholesome rules of civic conduct. Just 
outside, in the portico, stand the brass cannon 
wrenched from Hessian and British hands on the 
great day at Bennington; and mthin the halls hang 
the stained and tattered flags of a later and vaster 
conflict, to which the loyal little state sent one-tenth 
of her entire population, — ^more than one-half of all 
her able-bodied men. Surely it is a fitting time and 
place, and this dignified and beautiful presence is an 
inspiration to one who tries to tell once more the 
story of the heroism of the New Hampshire Grants 
— The Making of Vermont. 

I cannot expect to tell you anything you have not 
heard before. If it were new it w^ould be false; and 
the story I am set to tell is true. But old stories 
are not always dull, as we, who were once boys and 
girls, can testify, and I count tonight upon your 
partial fondness for the theme, just as your mother 
did V'hen she repeated some familiar tale which for 
the hundredth time could charm the ears of childhood. 

Vermont was made and fashioned in the conflict 
of tremendous forces. If she had not been harder 
than the millstones of oppression that chafed her she 

278 



would have been pulverized between tliem; but she 
was a diamond, and came out of the process every 
facet symmetrically polished and luminous with 
liberty. 

If we seek for causes we must look far back. Be- 
fore ever a white man's foot had touched her borders 
her destiny was being shaped in the struggles and 
rivalries of Europe. Her fate hung for a time on 
the division of this continent between Britain and 
Holland, and afterwards between Britain and France. 
England had laid her hand upon the Atlantic coast 
from Florida to Labrador, and said, "Take notice, 
all this is mine." But the Dutch had been first up 
the Hudson: they had planted a trading post at 
Albany, ?nd claimed the land southward to Delaware 
Bay and northward to Cape Cod. The wave of 
Dutch settlement spreading eastward from Hudson 
River met the wave of English settlement spreading 
westward from Narragansett Bay, and there began 
to be trouble. It was the old question of boundary, 
— at all times the most fruitful source of controversy, 
if we except woman, since the world began. This 
controversy, howerver, was settled for the time being 
by a sort of treaty between the Dutch governor on 
the one hand and the New England commissioners on 
the other, and the line had been estiiblished ten miles 
east of Hudson River and running north as far as 
anybody cared. England would never recognize this 
settlement, — indeed, she could not without recognizing 
the Dutch claim, and she was resolved to treat the 
Dutch as intruders. But Holland ratified it as her 
permanent eastern bound. That was in 1650. Fourteen 
years later, in 1664, the English Ring, Charles IT., 

279 



made up his mind it was time to oust the Hollanders. 
So, in the usual generous manner of kings, he gave 
all the land they claimed to his brother James, Duke 
of York, and sent him over here with plenty of ships 
and men to take possession; and he did so completely 
that same autumn of 1664. But, strange as it may 
seem to us. only two years earlier this same generous 
king had granted the charter of Connecticut, to take 
in everything within its range from Narragansetl" 
Bay to the Pacific Ocean ; and just north of that, thirty 
years before, the Crown had granted the charier of 
]\Iassachusetts, likewise stretching westward across 
the continent. Ordinary men, if they had made deeds 
like these, might have looked for difficulties; but these 
were the deeds of kings. So we need not be surprised 
to find that when Charles granted the Dutch teri-itory 
to his dearly-beloved brother he granted him every- 
thing in sight — from Delaware Bay to Connecticut 
River. Hiland Hall, in his painstaking Early History 
of Vermont, has pointed out the reasons for the extrav- 
agant language of this deed and has shown clearly 
enough that the King's intent w^as to embrace only 
the Dutch possessions, which the Dutch themselves, 
as we have just seen, had limited on the east to a ten- 
mile line from Hudson River. "Within six weeks after 
the conquest of New Netherlands the eastern line was 
in fact located by the King's commissioners only 
twenty miles east of the river, ru7ining northerly to 
Lake Champlain; and that is the line for which 
our fathers contended. But long afterwards New 
York unearthed and brought to light this old charter 
to the Duke and sought to bound herself by the Con- 
necticut. 

280 



So much for British and Dutch, but England 
and France were to have a longer and a tougher 
struggle. It was not until a century later, in 1760, 
that Canada passed from under the banner of the 
fleur-de-lis and North America was secured to the 
Anglo-Saxon. It was a French Catholic explorer who 
sailed up the Sorel River and Lake Champlain in 1609. 
It was French Jesuits who discovered Lake George in 
164.6, and gave its emerald waters the pious name St. 
Sacrament. It was a little colony of French Cana- 
dians, unquestioning children of the Mother Church, 
that settled at Chinmey Point in 1730. Cro^^^l Point 
and Ticonderoga were the work of Frenchmen, and 
the land where we live was long reckoned a part of 
New France. Our lofty water-shed sends do^^Ti its 
eastern slope stream after stream to Connecticut 
River and Long Island Sound, and down its western 
side to Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence, and 
not a drop today, thank God ! will touch a foot of soil 
that is not under Anglo-Saxon rule. Yet those north- 
w^ard flowing streams traverse a region almost as un- 
like our own in manners, customs, religious, and po- 
litical idi;as, as the Latin and Teutonic races are un- 
like. The French provinces shifted their allegiance, 
but not their ways and views of life. There the 
statesman may be in place, but the priest is in power. 
It was a great moment for our unborn State that 
saw the l^Jnglish flag planted upon the battlements of 
Quebec, guaranteeing that these hills and valleys 
should be peopled from New England, not from New 
France. 

So you see, we Vermonters narrowly escaped 
being Dutchmen, and still more narrowly escaped 

281 



being Frenchmen; but it was by a special interposi- 
tion of Providence that we escaped being New York- 
ers! Now if you feel half -inclined to resent even a 
jest that would seem to cast a slur upon the magni- 
ficent Empire State, I am glad, for that feeling is 
the surest proof and truest measure of the vast 
change that has taken place since 1777. Looking upon 
our sisterhood of states today, resting on the same 
broad principles of free government, bound together 
and bulwarked by the same great constitution, we 
mij-i^ht ask. What matter w^hether a little tract, of ten 
thousand square miles, should fall within the bounds 
of one or another? But from 1760 to 1791 it was 
not so. The colonies differed widely. 

New England was, indeed, pretty much all alike, — 
Puritan in religion, democratic in government, pro- 
gressive in spirit, choosing her own officers, doing 
her own business in town meeting, jealous of inter- 
ference from over-sea, chafing under restraint and 
ready to cast off the lightest weight of oppression. 
New York was just the opposite, — churchy in religion, 
arjstrocratic in government, Tory in politics, a 
stumbling-block throughout the Revolution. The 
people had small voice in affairs of state ; local officers 
were appointed by the governor, and he, of course, 
by the Crown; a few strong families, securing enor- 
mous grants of land and pilfering from the publi«} 
purse without shame, almost without concealment, 
ruled the colony. Of course I do not mean that 
the common people of New York were so different 
from the common people of New England. Their 
heart was in the Revolution — their heart was with 
the Vermonters when Vermont contended with their 

282 



government at home. But they were not in control. 
I speak of the men who held the reins of power, and 
of the form of institutions that enabled them to rule ; 
for it was these that gave character to the colony. 
We should not readily consent even today to become 
a county or two of New York, swallowed up and lost 
in her seven million population, our individual traits 
and traditions surrendered, our independence a thing 
of the past. Yet all that might happen today with 
smaller loss to us and to our children than that which 
threatened our fathers w^hen they declared their 
determination to be free. 

This is the view which gives dignity and eleva- 
tion to our theme. The quarrel between New York 
and the Hampshire Grants w^as not a mere question 
of boundary; it was not a great law-suit concerning 
land; it was not merely resistance to unjust and ar- 
bitrary acts that threatened ruin to a thous- 
and homes. You cannot rightly estimate the struggle, 
you cannot even understand it, until you see in it a 
gi'apple betw^een aristrocracy and democracy, — 
between the Crown and the ComJnonwealth. The 
principles and practices of government that marked 
the sway of Golden and Glinton came down through 
the school of kingly prerogative to Geo. III. from 
Charles I., while the strength of Allen and "Warner, 
of Fay and Chittenden, was drawn from the ideas 
that settled Plymouth and triumphed at Naseby and 
held up the hands of the Long Parliament, ideas that 
prompted the pen of Milton, the tongue of Vane, the 
heart of Hampden, the sword of Cromwell, and finally 
brought the head of the first Stuart to the block. Ver- 
mont was peopled from Rhode Island, Massachusetts 

283 



and Connecticut. The key fact is not that they took 
charters through Benning Wentworth from the king, 
but that the}^ claimed the rights of freemen through 
a long line of heroic fathers from the King of kings. 
But they were clearly right in their contention judged 
by the plainest rules of equity and law. The old con- 
troversy has been threshed over a thousand times. Let 
us try to state it once more in a few simple words. 

"When the French war came to an end, in 1760, 
this territory between the lake and the long river, 
west and east, between Canada and the Massachusetts 
border, north and south, was practically one unbroken 
wilderness. But it was not unknown, nor unfamiliar, 
to the New England soldiers, who had made their 
way through it again and again during the long war 
that was now over. They found here pure water, 
fertile soil, natural fruits, abundant fish and game, 
attractive scenery; and they made up their minds to 
take deeds and settle. Where should they go for 
titles? Why, they went to the only man who seened 
to be in the business of granting titles at that time — 
and that was Governor Wentworth of New Hamp- 
shi]-e. The King had given him a charter of the lands 
north of Massachusetts and extending westward 
"until they met his other governments." His other 
gov^ernment on the west was of course New York; and 
that meant, as every one supposed, to the eastern line 
of New York as acknowledged by Holland when she 
was in possession, as located by the king's commis- 
sioners upon the conquest of New Netherlands, as 
laid down upon the accepted map of British pos- 
sessions and as understood and practically agreed 
upon by the people of the neighboring jurisdictions 

284 



for a hundred years, — substantially the eastern line 
of New York as it is today. 

Benning Went worth, beginning with the grant of 
his nan^e-sake town, Bennington, in 1749, and acting 
under his royal license, issued grants of one hundred 
and thirty to^\^lships; and into this new land, from 
Massachusetts and Connecticut, from the Rhode 
Island and Pro\ddence Plantations, thronged the 
hardy and adventurous settlers, founding the first 
rude homes that were to be the cradle of the future 
State. 

But then New York set up her claim under the 
old charter to the Duke, and said. The Connecticut is 
my boundary ; and the case came before King and 
Council in London. There for a long time it wavered 
in the balances, which on the whole Inclined to the 
New Hampshire side, until political weights were 
thrown in which turned the scale. You remember 
it was 1764 and '5, — the era of the stamp 
af:t. The mutterings of the American Revolution 
were beginning to be heard, and the King dimly fore- 
saw that he had a struggle at hand mth his subjects. 
It was a shrewd time for New York to suggest a pos- 
sible advantage to the Crown if the new territory 
should become a part of loyal, Tory New York, rather 
than Whig, rebellious New^ England. The suggestion 
did its work, and in April, 1765, news came that the 
boundary was to be the Connecticut. 

But wherever the line was drawn the settlers 
should certainly have been undisturbed. New Hamp- 
shire and New York were both royal provinces, not 
proprietary ones. That is to say, they were under 
the immediate control of the King, who might draw 

285 



the line between the two to suit his will. But while 
the line remained uncertain, grants from either gov- 
ernment, niade in his name and settled in good faith 
by his subjects, ought, by the simplest and plainest 
rules of law and justice, to have been held good ; and 
such was the V7ew adopted and announced by the 
English government. But New York set it aside, and 
instead of treating the line as newly-established, 
treated it as having been the line from the beginning, 
declared all charters from the New Hampshire gov- 
ernor null and void, and proceeded to re-grant the 
lands to others. 

Outrageous as her course was, the reasons ?nd 
motives v/hich prompted it made it more outrageous 
still. The great feudal families that had plundered 
and pillaged New York for a century had well-nigh 
exhausted that territory and were looking for new 
lands to divide up. Col. Nicholas Bayard, member 
of the council, had had a grant of fifty fertile miles 
along riverside, to yield and pay therefor the mag- 
nificent rental of one otter skin a year. The Rev. 
Godfrey Dellius, minister at Albany, wdth four others 
took a grant fifty miles in length by four in breadth 
along the Mohawk river, two miles on each side of it, 
(oh, ministers were modest in those days!) mtli a 
quit rent of one beaver skin per annum for the first 
seven years and five beaver sMns a year forever 
after. And this same minister, whose Christian 
name by some mistake was Godfrey instead of Godly, 
got another tract seventy miles long by twelve miles 
wide on Hudson river, bounded on the south by the 
present to^^n of Saratoga, and in return therefor 
undertook to see that the King had one raccoon skin 

286 



every year. The governors did not forget themselves. 
They granted vast tracts to figureheads who the next 
day deeded back to them. And when they made 
genuine grants to others they exacted enormous fees 
for the patent, which seldom found their way to the 
royal exchequer. But the greatest objection that 
New Englanders could have to these dishonest grants 
was that they placed the earth in the hands of men 
who were unwilling to divide and sell it, but were 
determined to people it with a dependent tenantry. 
It meant feudalism. 

Such was the spirit of greed and wanton disre- 
gard of public right that had characterized the old 
government of that province of which the Hamp- 
shire Grants had now become a part. It was not long 
before the same spirit made itself manifest here. In 
the very next month after news came that New York 
had won, her governor granted to twenty-six men in 
common a tract of twenty-six thousand acres, twelve 
miles long with an average width of three miles, com- 
prising the rich valley of the Battenkill in the present 
towns of Arlington, Sunderland, Manchester, and 
Dorset. The twenty-six men were men of straw, and 
a few weeks later they turned the property over to 
three men, the real OAvners, — Kempe, Duane, and 
Rutherford. The first was attornej^ general of the 
province, the second a conspicuous lawj^er, the third 
a merchant, and all arrant speculators. The grant 
was on its face a double violation of the King's in- 
structions, for it extended lengthwise along the banks 
of a river, and failed to embrace poor land along with 
good. In these very towns, on some of these very 
lands, the Hampshire settlers were making their 
homes. 

287 



Grant after grant followed in quick succession 
until November 1st, 1765, when all at once they 
ceased. "Why? November 1st, 1765, was the day 
fixed by the British Parliament for the stamp act to 
take effect. liand patents were required to be 
stamped. But there were no stamps to be had — ^the 
American people had seized them. 

That same month brought a new governor to New 
York, Sir Henry Moore, a young and ardent soldier 
with some reputation for fairness and chivalry. To 
hini the Hampshire settlers went with their grievance. 
He gave them pleasant words but no relief. At last 
he made an order that they might apply to have their 
grants confirmed under New York. But the condi- 
tions imposed in patent fees and new surveys were 
too heavy. The pioneers had spent their all in their 
first purchase and improvements, and went back dis- 
heartened. Then they applied to the Crown. They 
sent Samuel Eobinson with a petition to the King 
signed by a thousand grantees. 

The King and ministry were on the side of the 
settlers. They encouraged their claims and threatened 
the rulers of the province if they held on in their 
unjust course. Some of the council were ready to 
take the bull by the horns and confirm the charters 
out of hand. But — how great things turn upon small ! 
— the president of the council had the gout. He grew 
cross and tired of the long-winded hearing, and so the 
settlers were finally turned out and told to seek their 
remedy in the courts of law. When we remember 
that the court of law was at Albany, and its judges 
and officers the most determined enemies the settlers 
had, we are reminded of Thomas Erskine's sudden 

288 



and brilliant reply to Lord Kenyon, when he dis- 
missed his case and advised him to take it into chan- 
cery — ' ' Would your Lordship send a dog you loved 
there?" They did not seek the court at Albany; 
but they didn't have to — the court at Albany sought 
them. It sent out its writs of ejectment. They stood 
for trial at the June term, 1770. The settlers had 
no confidence in the court, but they appeared and 
defended. A test case was put on. The plaintifi: 
showed his patent from New York. The defendant 
offered to show his earlier patent from New Hamp- 
shije; but the court shut it out, and ordered a verdict 
for the plaintiff, holding as matter of law that New 
York had always extended to the Connecticut. This 
was the end of the cases. The odds were all against 
the settlers. The Lieutenant Governor, several of 
the counsellors, many leading men in the province, the 
Attorney General himself, were claimants under New 
York. Even Judge Livingston who presided was a 
grantee, in common with his family and friends, of 
thirty-fivt; thousand acres, and generally believed to be 
the real owner of the whole. Is it strange that the 
settlers looked upon the trial as a mockery? Their 
leading counsel had been a distinguished lawyer of 
Connecticut, Jared Ingersol; but the defence had 
been prepared by an unknown man, not a lawyer, who 
then first appeared upon the scene — Ethan Allen. He 
attended and watched the trial. Wlien it was over 
the Attorney General said to him, "You hadl)etter go 
home and tell your friends to make the best terms they 
can with the landlords. Wliatever the merits of your 
caso, you see how things are going, and in these 
matters might makes right." It was then that Allen 

289 



made his immortal answer : * ' The gods of the valleys 
are not rhe gods of the hills/' ''What does that 
mean?" asked Kempe. "Come up to Bennington," 
said Allen, "and we'll show you." 

The effect of the Albany decision was to annul 
every grant under New Hampshire. With the settlers 
their all was at stake. They had bought the land and 
paid for it; they had gone into the wilderness and 
built their homes ; they had sweat to clear the ground, 
and all they had in the world was invested in the soil. 
If the judgment was to stand and be enforced they 
were beggars and outcasts upon the face of the earth. 
They resolved to appeal — to bring the case before 
tbe King himself, and in the meantime to defend their 
homes. It was an audacious stand; it was throwing 
their gage in the face of government itself; but it 
was that or ruin. 

Then began to be shown forth those qualities, — 
courage, endurance, sagacity, self-control — which 
through seven dangerous and desperate years were 
to slowly mold a hundred fearful and scattered set- 
tlements into a single bold, united and independent 
people. 

At first the problem was how to resist the courts 
without bringing the royal government about their 
ears. The ministry was favorably inclined: they 
could not afford to anger it. Yet that would assured- 
ly follow an open and bloody revolt. In all the excit- 
ing and dramatic events that followed, the most re- 
markable fact is, that throughout the long years of 
obstinate resistance to the New York authority not a 
single life was taken or lost. What volumes that 
speaks for the wisdom and self-restraint of the Green 

290 



Mountain Boys. Oh, I know they threatened ter- 
ribly. More than one traitor they banished under 
pain of death if he returned. ]\Iore than one venture- 
some New York officer learned painfully that he had 
got out of his bailiwick, and went home wdtli the 
enormous beech seal upon his back, bearing, it was 
thought, a ghastly resemblance to the seal on New 
Hampshire land-grant parchments, which the settlers 
insisted was a beech tree. These culprits were given 
a certificate that they had been once duly punished — 
a sort of parole like those since furnished by our prison 
commissioners — effectual during good behavior. It 
was poetic justice, the settlers maintained, that these 
offenders should be chastened, as they put it, with 
''the t^\dgs of the wilderness, the growth of the land 
they coveted." When the council of New York set 
a price on the heads of our leaders, our leaders set 
a price on the heads of the jobbers, and neither 
bounty was ever claimed. 

We must never lose sight of the fact that it was 
not a coiitroversy between the people of the two dis- 
tricts. The people of New York could never be induced 
to back up their leaders in this quarrel. If this were 
an old feud between sister states we might hesitate 
to revive its memories. But it is not so. The stuffed 
catamount that crouched atop Fay's tavern sign- 
post in Bennington grinning towards the New York 
border, Avas not showing his teeth to the people of 
New York but to the heartless rulers and land-jobbers 
whom their own people condemned. The sheriff was 
never able to summon a posse that would stand by 
him. He came once with three hundred, lieutenanted 
by the mayor and alderman of Albany and four 

291 



lawyers. He was going to set out James Breaken- 
ridge. But they were stopped at the bridge by a half- 
dozen. The leaders were allowed to pass on to the 
house and hold parley with its cjcore of defenders, 
who sent back word that they would hold it at all 
hazards ; whereupon, spite of coaxing and threatening, 
the posse comitatus went off to their homes. They 
had better business than ousting honest settlers under 
dishonest judgments. 

The Green Mountain Boys had that free and open 
way of dealing with their cause which goes with an 
undoubting faith in its merits. One day a New Yorker 
dismounted at the Catamount Tavern. On entering 
he saw a large gathering and thinking it might 
be something private offered to go into another room. 
"Oh, no!" he was answered, "stay and hear the 
discussion." Stephen Fay, the landlord, was reading 
aloud Gov. Tryon's proclamation. When he came 
to the statement that the Connecticut River had 
always been New York's eastern boundary, the reader 
dropped the sententious comment that "/le knew that 
Avas a damned lie." When the reading was over the 
guest was asked his opinion; and when he said he 
thought the Yorkers would win, Eihan Allen ga^e 
him. a sounding thwack on the shoulder and exclaimed, 
"A man must be a fool to talk like that. Haven't we 
licked 'em every time they've come up here?" They 
cast off all pretences and made their appeal to the 
facts. When one of them was asked to show his 
commission for his doings in a certain raid, he held 
up the stump of his thumb, which he had lost in an 
encounter with Justice Munro, and cried, "Here is 
my commission." 

292 



Yet dramatic as are the incidents which marked 
those years from 1770 to 1775, we ?hall miss the true 
meaning of the narrative if we fail to see how the 
bonds of a larger and firmer union were growing and 
knitting between town and town. Each had its com- 
mittee of safety and the committees came together in 
convention. They resolved to put a stop to New York 
surveys and to permit no settlements thereunder. 
They organized the militia and made good their reso- 
lution. The New York hirelings seized Remember 
Baker, and they rescued him. Justice Munro w^ho 
had planned the capture refused to return Baker's 
gun ; and, when Seth Warner rode into his yard on 
horseback to demand it, tried to arrest him. Warner 
struck him over the head with his cutlass, and the 
town of Poultney voted him a hundred acres in grate- 
ful recognition of the act. Rumor said that Gov. 
Try on was coming with regulars, and cannon were 
brought up from Hoosic for defence. The opposition 
grew so formidable that governor and council began 
to weaken and offer terms. Bennington met them 
gladly but they fell through. Every attempt of 
Yorkers to settle on the land was headed off. The 
committees were everywhere alert. Gov. Tryon 
begged the ministry for troops and was refused. 
Tryon had need of troops — no doubt whatever about 
that. It was a one-sided struggle indeed when a land- 
lord sent his servile tenantry to wrest the soil from 
individual owners. 

But in the meantime the settlers were pushing 
their apf>eal to the Crown, and sent Breakenridge 
and Hawley to London. They were referred to the 
Board of Trade. The Board of Trade reported in 

293 



their favor, — censured the conduct of Tryon in the 
strongest terms, — and the King approved it. But 
their report was like one from our Board of Railroad 
Comimissioners — good advice, perhaps, but you can 
do as you think best about adopting it. New York 
refused to adopt it — sent back a lengthy protest, and 
there the matter hung. Meanwhile in Vermont the 
incessant warfare went on. Forts Avere built; riots 
were frequent; again and again the governor called 
on London for troops. But the Vermont whirlpool 
was now caught up and lost for a time in the swirl 
of a mightier current. The American Revolution was 
coming on apace. Every colony except New York 
had resolved to cut off all commerce with the mother- 
land until she should take back her unjust laws. 
Congress declared any colony refusing to join an 
enemy to the common cause. Vermont was with 
the Congress — exasperated that New York held back 
and that she must be counted a part of it. At West- 
minster on the 14th of March the cohinty court 
was to hold its session in the name of New York 
and of the King. The settlers determined it should 
not be held. They had long hated and distrusted it. 
Now they met, on the 13th, with clubs of cordwood 
and took possession of the court house. The sheriff 
ordered them to disperse; then withdrew to resume 
negotiations in the morning. But this was only a 
ruse. Just before midnight he came again with an 
armed force and fired into their midst, killing two and 
wounding eight others. The patriots fought their 
way out with their cudgels. One oE them laid about 
him so lustily that eight or ten of the posse went down 
with damaged heads. His name was Philip Safford. 

294 



How I wish he had spelt his name with at! This was 
the first blood of the Revolution — spilt more than a 
month before the grass was reddened on the lawn at 
Lexington. The court did open, but no business was 
transacted for by noon the countryside was up and 
the streets of the village swarmed with angry men. 
Soon came the Lexington and Concord fights, and then 
the whole country was in arms. 

Canada was Tory, the certain base from which 
British forces would move down upon the colonists. 
Lake Champlain was the door to the country and Ti- 
conderoga was the key. Straight at the fort the 
Green JMountain Boys struck; and on the morning 
of the 10th of May the union jack came down — the 
first time, but not the last, it saluted the coming re- 
public. New York's Tory governor said it was ''the 
Bennington mob" that did it, and for once he seems 
to have been right. The capture gave the Green 
Mountain Boj'^s irmnense prestige. They were out- 
laws no longer, and Allen and Baker could mingle 
and consult with the friends of freedom in New York 
without danger of arrest. Congress bade them raise 
a batallion to be under their own leaders, and after 
that a regiment; and they did. Seth "Warner was 
Colonel. Ethan Allen went to stir up patriotism in 
Canada, raised a hundred men, fell upon Montreal, 
and if his colleague had not failed him would have 
taken it. He was himself taken instead and sent in 
irons to England. But the Revolution, when it did 
carry New York, brought no help to the Yermonters. 
To them the new government was as hostile as the 
old. So Vermont said to the Congress : We will stand 
ty you and fight for you, but not under New York. 

295 



We will contribute by ourselves. And there she stood 
throughout the struggle. 

Vermont was an apt scholar, and she soon had 
the Declaration of Independence by heart. Moreover, 
she had a practical turn of mind and proceeded to 
apply it to her o^YJl situation. Puil:ing the governor 
of New York for Geo. Ill it seemed to fit her case 
exactly. That is the danger of great truths. Announce 
one, pledge yourself to a great principle, and you can 
never tell what selfish hold you may have to relax, 
what darling sin must be given up. Vermont had 
learned to spell Freedom — she was learning to spell 
the longer and harder word Indepeyidence. It did 
not take her long. In September after the great 4th 
of July she, too, passed measures towards a separate 
government, and in January, 1777, unanimously de- 
clared, — "The people of the New Hampshire Grants 
are and of right ought to be a free and independent 
state. ' ' 

Then she asked to be taken into the Union: and 
of course she met her old enemy at the door. The 
Congress could not tell what to do. It was between 
two fires. If it took in Vermont it might lose New 
York, of all the colonies the easiest to lose and in some 
respects the most important to hold, — strategically 
their ^ailnerable point and the key to the country. 
New York must be held fast. On the other hand, 
Vermont was the road from Canada, and the frontier 
of three states. What she could do in a pinch had 
been shoT\Ti at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. That 
justice was on her side looked plausible, and that she 
was not to be trifled Avith, her long opposition to 
New York bore witness. At least two of the leading 

296 



spirits in Congress — Sam Adams and Roger Sherman 
— were on her side. Sam Adams, the man of the town 
meeting, who organized the Revolution and met the 
will of King George with an obstinacy as inflexible as 
his own, — the farthest sighted statesman of his time: 
Roger Sherman, called by his contemporaries the man 
of supreme common sense, — of whom Jefferson de- 
clared that he never said a foolish thing in his life — 
Sherman, as our enemies themselves reported, plead 
our cause mth a zeal he had never shown in any other. 
Here again we see the line of cleavage between pre- 
rogative and popular rights. Adams and Sherman 
were for us because they were, and always had been, 
tribunes of the people. So Congress did the only 
thing it dared to do — ^nothing. 

But Vermont did something : made her a constitu- 
tion; appointed a council of safety, and put on the 
forms and powers of government. It was high time. 
Burgojme 's magnificent army was coming up the lake. 
Ticonderoga was abandoned, and our forces put to 
flight at Hubbardton. She sent her call to New 
Hampshire and the Bay State, and they answered. 
The Tories in her midst fled to the enemy and on the 
instant she seized the goods they left and turned them 
into powder and ball. Joining her forces under Warn- 
er and Stark with the New Hampshire and Massachu- 
setts boys at Bennington, she helped fight the two 
fights and win the double victory of that day, well 
earning for her people the proud title Burgoyne gave 
them when he reported his disasters — "the most 
active and rebellious race of the continent. " In a few 
short weeks her council of safety, a handful of plain 
farmers, had developed a foresight and skill in the 

297 



conduct of large affairs that would have shed luster 
on the oldest state. 

Then sne made a mistake, almost her first mis- 
take. Sixteen towns on the other side of Connecticut 
River asked leave to come in. They were said to be 
unanimous and New Hampshire willing. Her As- 
sembly voted to admit them. When New Hampshire 
resented the act and the true state of affairs became 
known Vermont drew back; but it was too late. Bad 
blood had been brewed; and New Hampshire that 
before had favored her claim and virtually acknowl- 
edged her independence became her enemy. 

Now the plot thickens. New Hampshire and 
New York strike hands, and agree to divide the bone 
of contention between them« — the Green Mountains 
shall be the line of division. They work together 
upon Congress; and Congress undertakes at last to 
decide her fate. But stop ! Vermont denies its right 
to judge. She is a sovereign independent state, as 
right in her revolt from New York as Congress in its 
revolt from G-reat Britain, and will not submit the 
question of her existence to any court or congress 
under heaven If Congress will not take her in she 
vtdll appeal to the legislatures of the states one by 
one, and begins to send forth her messages. 

But now a greater danger threatens. An English 
army is coming up the lake under Carleton. In New 
York the Mohawk valley is raided. In Vermont Roy- 
alton is visited by three hundred redskins under a 
British leader, and laid in ashes. Vermont is the 
buffer between the colonies and Canada, — open to 
be run over from the north, left defenceless, the con- 
tinental troops withdrawn, plotted against by New 

298 



Hampshire on the east, by New York on the west, 
Massachusetts claiming a part of her territory on the 
south, Congress itself taking steps to stamp her out, 
the horrors of invasion and Indian massacre staring 
her in the face — it is 1781 — it is the hour of her 
supreme trial — it is the world against Vermont, and 
Vermont against the world! 

Then shines forth the clear courage, the daunt- 
less defiance, that prove when men are fitted to be 
free. The voice of the state is the voice of Ethan Allen 
replying to Congress, "We are as resolutely deter- 
mined to defend the independence of Vermont as 
Congress that of the United States: and rather than 
fail we will retire into the desolate caverns of the 
mountains and wage war mth human nature at 
large. ' ' 

Unless they did retire to the caverns they had 
only one resource left — diplomacy: the means a boy 
adopts to evade punishment — only in that case we 
call it lying. First they negotiated with the British 
general and brought about an exchange of prisoners. 
Then they led him on to believe that they might be 
won back to the Crown. By shrewd suggestions, by 
well explained delays, they kept the negotiations on 
foot and held off the army of invasion from their 
own borders and those of New York alike for the 
better part of a year, till the immediate danger had 
passed by, — one of the most successful intriguings in 
history. Was it right? Was it justifiable? They 
claimed it was only a kind of strategy justified by the 
perils of their position. They thought if God could 
forgive a mother for lying to save her child from the 
tomahawk of a savage, he might perhaps forgivo 

299 



them their falsehood which probably saved hundreds 
from massacre. Honest New York, though her own 
homes were saved by it, thought it was very wicked! 
Vermont was quite veiling Congress should take 
alarm at it; and Congress, you may well guess, was 
on pins and needles. The desertion of Vermont 
might prove fatal to the cause. 

Then the plucky little state determined on a 
still bolder stroke. New Hampshire's settlements on 
the Connecticut and New York's settlements east of 
the Hudson wanted to be annexed. She annexed 
them, thereby doubling her o\\ti territory. So far 
it was a shrewd move. It brought Congress to its 
senses; and Congress said — ''Give up this new terri- 
ritory and you may come in." But New York pro- 
tested, and Vermont refused. Meantime civil war was 
kindling in these new wings of territory. It was at 
this crisis that Washington interposed, advised our 
fathers to recede and assured them of final success if 
they did; and the Vermont Assembly, all honor to 
it! voted without a division to take his word. 

But New York had one more card to play. She 
had public lands which the Congress coveted. By 
giving up those she made herself friends in the Ver- 
n^ont quarrel. She stirred up discord in Windham 
county, sent her officers in to set up her authority, 
and, when Vermont threw them into jail and let them 
out on promise of better behavior, she brought them 
with their pitiful complaints before Congress, and 
Congress passed this imbecile order: It directed 
that each citizen should be permitted to recognize and 
obey whichever government he preferred — a capital 
program for anarchy — and threatened to send an 

300 



army to enforce the decree. Washington raised his 
hand, the army never came. The year of 1784 saw the 
last attempt of the old Congress to meddle with Ver- 
mont affairs. Thence until 1791, seven years, Ver- 
mont went on her unmolested way, a free and inde- 
pendent state. New York did not recognize her; 
the Congress did not take her in; but they let her 
alone, and that was all she asked. 

The war of the Revolution was over. The treaty 
of peace had been signed at Paris and ratified by 
Congress, and it embraced Vermont. So she had 
nothing to fear from Great Britain. If the Union 
did not want her she could get along very well in- 
deed, thank you, without the Union. She could not 
be asked to help pay its old debts, and that was pleas- 
ant. She had no debts of her own, for she had kept 
her men paid up as the war went on and saved her- 
self a deal of expensive fighting by her wits, — by 
hoodmnMng the enemy and holding off the invasion. 
"When she had to have money she raised it by selling 
her lands, and in spite of what New York would 
have called the flaw in the title they brought her a 
very fair price. She had plenty of good land left. 
Here where we are met the axe was not struck in 
the tree until 1787. Settlers were eager to come 
in. Taxes were light; the soil was rich; the govern- 
ment was firm and mild. She was doing better than 
any of her neighbors. They were running dowTi. 
They had the debts of the Confederation to pay, 
and heavy debts of their own. If you would be re- 
minded of the wretched, almost hopeless condition 
that prevailed in the colonies between the treaty of 
peace and the birth of the Federal government, you 

301 



will find it summed up by John Fiske in his Critical 
Period of American History, dealing with those very 
years. She exercised about all the functions of a 
sovereign state, fixed the standard of weights and 
measures, coined money, had her post ofQces and 
a postmaster general. The post office was usually the 
tavern drawer where the mail was all thrown in 
together and if you thought you ought to have a letter 
you waited till the postmaster could find it ; but that 
was better located than the one at Salem, Illinois, 
when *'Abe Lincoln" was pOvStmaster and carried 
all the mail around in his hat. "We have better 
appliances today but we know far less than they 
did if we have not learned that red-tape and furni- 
ture do not make a state. The tesi of a government 
is whether it governs. Theirs governed. In those 
days they were not so much set on rotation in office 
as on having their business well done. They miade 
the same man governor eighteen times. He hadn't 
much education and, I suppose, nothing at all of 
what Massachusetts calls ''culture;" but he was the 
governor in the original sense of the word — ^he 
steered the boat. This of course was old Gov. Chit- 
tenden. He kept a tavern and had the inquisitive- 
ness common among tavern-keepers in those days. 
The late Rowland Robinson in his delightful history 
of Vermont tells a story of him which Chittenden 
was fond of telling at his own expense. One day 
a traveler stopped for a drink at his bar. ''Where 
might you come from, friend?" inquired the Grov- 
ernor. "From down below," was the curt reply. 
"And where might you be going?" "To Canada.'* 
"To Canada? Indeed! And what might take you 

302 



there?" "To get my pension." "And what might 
you get a pension for, friend?" *'Por what you 
never will, as I judge. " " Indeed ! and what is that ? ' ' 
"For minding my owti business." And that was the 
end of the dialogue. 

What changes a few years may bring. Vermont 
did not care greatly now to join the Union. But 
New York had become anxious that she should. The 
measures which justice pleads for in vain are granted 
at last in some crisis because the selfish interests of 
men demand them'. So slaver^^ went down, not be- 
cause the people hated slavery any more than they did 
a year or two before when they mobbed abolition 
meetings, but because that was the only way to save 
the Union. So, x)erhaps, the saloon will be everywhere 
abolished some day when society awakes to the fact 
that it is being robbed of its money as well as of its 
m'anhood. So, perhaps, the ballot will be given to 
woman some day, not because it is right and always 
has been, but because the hour has arrived when 
the forces that would save the state cannot prevail 
without her. Revolutions are not brought about by 
sentiment alone. We did not enfranchise the negro 
because w^e loved him nor because he needed the ballot 
to protect his rights, but because the negro was almost 
the only friend the Union had in the South and we 
could not organize free governments there without his 
vote. 

New York wanted the Federal capital. The in- 
terests of Vermont would be identical with hers. 
Kentucky was knocking for admission and must be 
off-set by a northern state. Moreover, Vermont was 
independent of New York in fact and might as well 

303 



be so in law. This was the view taken by New York's 
great men, — by John Hay, by Gouveneur Morris, and 
by that greatest American of his time, save Washing- 
ton alone, Alexander Hamilton ; and although her nar- 
row and bigoted Clinton still kicked against the 
pricks, the way was made easy for her admission. 
And Vermont said, "Why, if it would be any accomo- 
dation to the Union she didn't know but she would 
come in! and so, at last, on the 4th of March, 1791, 
she did. 

Such was the making of Vermont. But what of 
the state that was made ? Browning wrote : 

"A people is but the attempt of many 
To rise to the completer life of one." 

Unity of ideal, purpose and effort, — ^that is what 
makes a state. The people of the New Hampshire 
Grants were made one by their resolve to defend their 
homes against the court at Albany; by their zeal in 
the colonial cause and contempt for the lagging policy 
of New York ; by their welcome of the Declaration of 
Independence, so perfectly suiting their own case ; by 
their ambition to frame a government fit for the sons 
of Puritans; but most of all by the efforts they put 
forth, by their toil, their dangers, their hardships and 
their sufferings. The outcome of their long trial and 
struggle was that peerless and costly product, a nation 
— a people one in purpose, effort, and ideal. 

She was one people then — she is one people still. 
The qualities that marked her out to be a nation by 
herself are hers today. She has always had an indi- 
viduality and character of her own. To say that a 
w;ord or a deed was like Vermont has always been to 
praise it and to give it the highest praise. She has 

304 



been first on many fields. She gave the first blood of 
the Revolution, at Westminster ; received the first sur- 
render of a British flag, at Ticonderoga ; was first to 
seize and sell the property of Tories; first to prohibit 
slavery by bill of rights ; and first to answer Lincoln 's 
call for volunteers. I am proud that she could not 
be enslaved herself, — prouder still that she would not 
enslave others. In 1777, when Ebenezer Allen took 
prisoners Dinah Morris and her child, he spread their 
freedom papers on the t6wn records of Bennington, 
*' being conscientious that it is not right in the sight 
of God to keep slaves." It took the Union almost a 
hundred years to reach that point ; but that is where 
Vermont stood from the beginning. Early in the cen- 
tury when Judge Harrington was requested to send 
back a fugitive slave, he demanded to be shown "a 
bill of sale from God Almighty;" and in later years 
when the fugitive slave law had been enacted, when 
almost every Northern state knelt to the South and 
even Boston gave up the hunted ones, let it stand 
to the everlasting glory of the Green Mountain State 
that no master ever dared to take a run-away slave 
in Vermont. 

Vermont has been the modern Sparta, — Lacedae- 
mon, the best example in all antiquity of inflexible 
devotion to the ideal state. Thermopylae was but one 
instance of an obedience to law that could never think 
of retreating or turning aside. There was a time when 
it was said, Let Greece furnish the troops and Sparta 
the commanders. On the field of battle, in the court 
and in the hall of legislation Vermont has shown her- 
self great. Her bench has been adorned by great 
judges; she has sent to Washington a line of states- 

305 



men ; she has mustered and armed forces that earned 
the ever-quoted order of Sedgwick ''Put the Ver- 
monters at the front and close up the column." But 
let us not claim for her what she has not earned. Her 
sons can afford to he modest. Respectable, more than 
respectable, is the work Vermont has done in almost 
every line of human endeavor, and in some she has 
won eminence. In art we point with pride to the 
productions of Powers and Mead and Hunt and 
Thomas Wood ; in poetry we claim admiration for the 
wit and satire of Saxe and for the refinemient and 
melody of Mrs. Dorr. But speaking broadly of our 
century and a quarter of individual life it must be 
admitted that Vermont has shown herself far stronger 
on the practical side than on the aesthetic. It has 
rather been her part, in great crises, to utter the 
calm word of counsel or strike the unerring blow. 

We cannot bear comparison with Massachusetts 
in art and letters, nor with New York in wealth, lux- 
ury and commerce, nor with many a western state, 
perhaps, in zeal and enterprise, though Vermont 
blood has made itself felt in each of these larger 
fields; but we have our mission and our glory, none 
the less — let them have theirs. 

"Leave to the soft Campanian his baths and his 

perfumes; 
Leave to the sordid race of Tyre their dyeing-vats and 

looms; 
Leave to the sons of Carthage the rudder and the oar; 
Leave to the Greek his marhle nymphs and scrolls of 

wordy lore!" 

But for Vermont, child of adversity, outcast on 
the mountain and nursed at the teats of the she-wolf 
Freedom, it is for her to keep pure that strain of 

306 



valor and hardihood that makes the iron in the blood 
of the Republic. When new, strange elements come 
in, seeking to alter the face of things, when lower 
ideals of life, freer customs and looser morals creep 
in like poison among the people, when she is bidden 
to renounce her Spartan views, relax her laws and 
do as the rest have done, let her not fail: let her be 
true to her traditions, and send back, charged with 
sublimer meaning, the old answer of Allen — ''The 
gods of the valleys are not the gods of the hills. ' ' 



307 



THE STATE AND ITS CRIMINALS 

Speech at the Annual Banquet of the University Club, at the 

Raleigh Hotel in Washington, D. C, February / 6, 

1907, 

Mr. President J and Members of the University 
Club : I thank you for bidding me to this banquet. I 
am glad aud proud to sit at such a board. Here are 
half a thousand men who stand for culture and im- 
provement. They have received the best their time 
and country had to give, and hold themselves ready 
to repay the debt. We speak not of the general 
humanities alone. Here are specialists from almost 
every field of service and inquiry. Washington easily 
gathers such, and the gathering itself is typical of 
Washington. And when we have said that, have 
we not said, tj^ical of America? England may 
not be judged by London, nor France by Paris, but 
surely Washington must be America in miniature. 
Its residents are drawn from every quarter of the 
land. Its laws are fashioned by a body that repre- 
sents all portions of the vast republic. What the 
city has lost in self government it has lost to the 
nation. To the nation it looks to send it wise and 
earnest makers of its laws. In legislating for the 
District of Columbia Congress is not embarrassed 
by any possibility of conflict between State and Fed- 
eral powers. Its hands are free. Within these sixty- 
five square miles it possesses all the legislative pow- 

308 



ers of state and nation both. Here then may we not 
hope to find the most enlightened laws and institu- 
tions ? 

We recognize the obligations of culture. We 
realize that every gift is a trust. We know that 
properly speaking there is no such thing as a gift, 
and never can be, — that nothing can be received with- 
out a corresponding obligation. We hold that the 
true test of greatness in men is the attitude they 
take towards their inferiors. The real hero on the 
ladder of life is always reaching up \vdth one hand 
for the round above him, but with the other he 
is always reaching down to help the man below him. 
So a nation must be judged by the way it treats 
its helpless and its criminals. The state is the mother 
of all her children. She must deal with them as such. 
The prosperous and powerful have drawn their 
strength from her bosom. The skilled and cultivated 
were trained and taught at her knees. The ignorant 
are those whom she has failed to call around her. 
The poor may be those whom her imperfect or part- 
ial laws have kept in poverty. Her very criminals 
are too often those who have taken their vicious taint 
from her own blood. You do not judge a father 
by what he does for his gifted and promising son. 
But how does he treat the son who has gone astray, 
the son who is imbecile or crippled or depraved? So 
do we judge times and peoples. If Helen Keller 
had been bom in Sparta she would have been left 
to the wolves on Mt. Taygetus. America saved her 
to instruct the intellect and inspire the heart. 

What shall we do with our criminals? For a 
quarter of a century the best thought of the world 

309 



has been devoted to the problem. A few things it 
has learned. It has learned to separate the con- 
victed from those who are merely accused. It has 
learned to build ample and sanitary jails. It has 
learned better than to keep men in idleness. It has 
learned to establish real reformatories for those who 
are under sentence. It has begun to teach and train 
the idle and vicious minds and hands. It has learned 
to build up as well as to tear down, — not only to 
remove the choking weeds, but to plant in their place 
the sweet, sustaining grain. It has learned to hold 
before the eyes of sorrow and despair the shining 
hope of a redeemed and respected life. It has 
learned to remold our laws to these humane ideas. 
For a fixed and unalterable sentence pronounced by 
the judge when the jury renders its verdict, it puts 
a sentence whose duration is to be determined by 
the conduct and improvement of the prisoner him- 
self as judged by those who see and watch him year 
by year. For the determined and incorrigible 
criminal it says there should be no release. Why 
should we turn back upon society its avowed and 
inveterate foes? For the penitent there should be 
the promise of conditional release when safe sur- 
roundings can be assured and a new trial ventured. 
It has learned another thing — that even among growTi 
men and women the first offence may sometimes prove 
the last if the offender can be given another chance 
and saved the infamy of a prison cell. The proba- 
tion system hangs over his head the sword of Dam- 
ocles and he knows the first infraction of the law 
will bring it down. 

These four things at least have been found good. 

310 



(1) An ample and sanitary jail with careful sep- 
aration of the convicted and the accused. (2) A 
probation system for adults as well as children. 
(3) A reformatory in place of the old hopeless 
prison. (4) An indeterminate sentence permitting 
the guarded find conditional release of the re- 
formed and the perpetual detention of the incorri- 
gible. Which of these wise changes have we adopted 
here? I am sorry to say, not one. Instead of these 
we have a jail, intended for three hundred, where 
almost twice that number are confined, two or three 
crowded in a room; the accused and the convicted 
treated alike; no modern plumbing; the calls of na- 
ture answered in the cell; and out of 24 hours of 
idleness and sloth thirty minutes of exercise. We 
have no probation system whatever except for chil- 
dren. A bo3^ just past his seventeenth birthday 
comes up for sentence for his first offense. You can 
send him. to the work house for six months or less. 
You can send him to the jail for not more than a 
year. Or, if the sentence be longer than a year, he 
can be sent to the penitentiary. But one of those 
three things you must do — you must smite him on 
the spot. Excepting the reform school for children, 
we have no reformatory whatever. For all those 
graver offenses which the statutes declare shall be 
punished in the penitentiary we have no institution 
in the District. Sentence is imposed and the con- 
vict goes where the Department of Justice sends 
him, to some state penitentiary with which it may 
have a contract. Some of the states have real re- 
formatories and laws that provide for indeterminate 
sentences. But we cannot send our prisoners to 

311 



these. Doubtless they are full already, and if they 
are not, we cannot send our prisoners to be held or 
released according to the laws of other jurisdictions. 
What we need in this respect is a true reformatory 
here in the District of Columbia and a law that will 
permit the offender to be sentenced for a term whose 
length shall be determined by the reformation of 
the prisoner himself — a prison that shall be what 
every prison ought to be, a moral hospital. 

Is this too much to look for at the very seat of 
government? The capital of a nation, though it lie 
at the level of the sea, is a city set on a hill; it can- 
not be hid. This capital of ours has a future of 
undreamed magnificence before it — destined to be- 
come the great throbbing heart of the western world 
through w^hich the purple tides of patriotic life will 
come and go. Here the miser History will gloat 
upon the treasures of the past ; the dreamer Prophecy 
will study out the stars; while the spendthrift Pres- 
ent pours his prodigalities on every hand. It ought 
to be, it must be, first and foremost in all that dig- 
nifies and justifies the ownership of sovereign pow- 
er. Power can afford to be patient. The State 
holding in her hands all might, need never be cruel, 
though for very kindness sake she must be stern. 
She should never dip her hands in the blood of her 
sons. Her office is not merely to guard the fold 
but to seek and save the lost. The capital of the New 
World shall be glorious not only with the homes of 
private splendor, the sumptuous palaces of untitled 
princes, with galleries of art and halls of learning, 
with spacious parks and noble boulevards, with 
monuments, viaducts and arches that shall suggest 

312 



only to put to shame the proudest triumphs of the 
ancient day, but most of all with law, — law that 
shall curb the strong while it lifts up the lowly and 
with mild majesty puts forth its arm to save even 
the hand that has been raised against it. Happy 
will be the sons of the morning whose eyes may see 
the realization of our vision — only less happy than 
we w^ho in the watches of the night may labor and 
sacrifice for its fulfillment. 



313 



ANN STORY: A WOMAN WHO HELPED 
TO FOUND A STATE 

Address at the Dedication of a Monument to Ann Story, at 
Salisbury, Vermont, July 27, J 905. 

When God is going to make the world a 
great man he begins by making a great woman for his 
mother. I do not say that he could not bring forth 
a brave and mighty son from a weak and timid moth- 
er; but I think it would trouble you to iind an in- 
stance where he ever did. There was never a great 
state that was not great in its women. The French 
king said, ''I am the state." He lied. The state 
was never born in a palace. It never vaunted itself 
upon a throne. It is born in the cottage; and it 
bears the throne upon its massive shoulders, as the 
elephant carries the flimsy and gaudy trappings of 
the circus on its back. The state is the people. It 
is born in the homes of industry, frugality and truth. 
It is cradled in the arms of love, fed at the breast 
of hope, and brooded on the knees of faith; and if 
it dies at last it dies because love, faith and hope 
have died before it in the homes where it was born. 
Pity the child that must blush for its parents. Envy 
the man who is proud of his race. The son who 
forgets his father will be forgotten by his children; 
and the state that will not remember its founders 
will not be long remembered by the world. 

This monument is erected to a mother in Israel 

314 



— one of Plutaich's women, worthy to have been a 
Roman matron in Rome's early day, Brutus' wife 
or Cato's daughter, — a woman of heroic mold, of un- 
compromising truth, of undaunted courage — tit com- 
panion for that race of young giants which made 
the name of Vermont synonymous with liberty, and 
the name of the Green Mountain Boys a terror unto 
its enemies. 

This is the spot, above all others, where her mem- 
orial ought to stand. Here, after her husband's 
sudden and tragic death, she came herself to occupy 
his cabin and widen the clearing he began. Here 
she saw that first strong house burned to the ground 
by savages. Here, with her own hands, she felled 
the trees for a second dwelling, and ^\dthout the aid 
of horse or ox rolled them to their place and rebuilt 
her home. Here she staid when other settlers prud- 
ently withdrew at the approach of war. Here, sum- 
mer after summer, with sturdy arm and unfalter- 
ing spirit, she pushed back the borders of the wilder- 
ness, planted her crops, gathered and reared her 
brood of children. Here, in the times that tried 
men's souls the friends of freedom came for counsel 
and succor. From this spot and by her direction 
started the little expedition that captured twenty 
Tories and landed them in Fort Ti. Under the op- 
posite bank of the creek she dug that secret cavern, 
her nightly shelter against Indian and Tory, the 
fruitful source of romantic traditions that have 
thrilled the hearts of three generations. And here at 
last she saw the end of war and the fair beo-innings of 
security and peace. Surely, here, if anywhere, one 
of the foundation stones of the Green Mountain Re- 
public was laid. 

315 



This woman was a Whig — a Revolutionary Whig. 
She had the vigor of mind to do her own thinking. 
She lived in a time when political opinions meant 
something. The American Revolution was not at 
bottoml a struggle between the colonies and Great 
Britain. It was a struggle between Whig and Tory. 
You might have t^ken up all the American people 
and set them down in England ; you might have taken 
up all the British people and set them down in 
America, and the Revolution would have gone on 
just the same. It was a line of cleavage that divided 
the English race wherever they happened to be. The 
Whig believed in progress ; he believed in the people ; 
he believed in self-government. The Tory believed in 
staying as he was, in the divine right of kings, in 
the doctrine that Rumbold denounced upon the scaf- 
fold — 'Hhat one part of the race is born booted and 
spurred, ready to ride, and the other is born ready 
saddled and bridled to be ridden." It was a time 
of intense convictions. To conceive an opinion was 
like being born of the spirit. The man was a new 
creature. He held to his view with the tenacity 
of a life and death purpose. The love of liberty was 
a consuming fire. The questions that divided men 
were not questions of policy. They were questions 
of principle, of patriotism. Opponents were sep- 
arated by the moral chasm, which cannot be bridged 
over. One side was eternally right, the other was 
eternally wrong. Newspapers did not sell their 
space to the opposite party "at the usual advertis- 
ing rates." To sow the contrary view was to plant 
treason. The cry of the age was the cry of Henry: 
''Give me liberty or give me death!'* It was one 

316 



thing or the other. There was no half-way house, 
no make-shift, no easy-going, comfortable alterna- 
tive. The Puritan, Republican ideas that a century 
before had shaken the English state to its founda- 
tion and given it the greatest chapter in its history, 
— those ideas had not spent their force here. They 
w^ere the breath of life in the nostrils of the new 
world. God's hand flung the seed of nations across 
the Atlantic and the finest grains fell on the bleak 
shores of New England. 

Our state was a slip from the old New England 
vine. Vermont was settled from Rhode Island, 
Massachusetts and Connecticut. The hardy and ad- 
venturous men who had made their way into the wild- 
erness were the picked and chosen spirits of those 
freedom-loving colonies. No wonder New York's 
Tory Governors found them hard to manage. No 
wonder Burgoyne proclaimed them ''the most active 
and rebellious race of the continent." Large- 
limbed, broad-chested, the best blood of England 
bounding in their veins, the wind of the free moun- 
tains bloT\4ng in their lungs, Runnymede and the 
Commonwealth woven into every fibre of brain and 
heart, what had they to do with the petty despots 
of a Tory colony, — the pitiful creatures and hangers- 
on upon royalty? They took liberty for their mis- 
tress and worshiped her with measureless devotion. 

When Ann Story came to Salisbury the New York 
trouble had been brewing for a dozen years. Ten 
years before the king had fixed the line between New 
York and New Hampshire at the Connecticut river. 
At the same ti^ie he had declared that grants pre- 
viously issued by the New Hampshire governor and 

317 



settled in good faith by his subjects should be held 
good. Year after year, New York had trodden the 
mandate under foot ; she had declared the New Hamp- 
shire charters null and void, and kept on granting 
the same lands to others. Five years before the test 
case had been tried at Albany, and a judgment had 
been rendered that made every claimant under New 
Hampshire a trespasser and a vagabond. When the 
decision was announced Allen had startled the con- 
fident land jobbers with that mysterious oracle, 
"The gods of the valleys are not the gods of the 
hills;" and summer and winter since, he had been 
laboring to make its meaning plain to their darkened 
understandings. For five restless and vigilant years 
The Green Mountain Boys had been holding off the 
writs of possession; they had been sending home 
the foreign surveyors with the great *^ beech seal" 
upon their backs; they had been teaching the New 
York officers by painful and repeated process to 
know and recognize the limits of their bailiwick. 
Prudence, sagacity and self-control had grown up to 
match their splendid courage, their unbending reso- 
lution. Year by year, through committee and con- 
vention, the bonds of union had been knitted between 
town and to^^ni, until the time had almost come when 
a hundred scattered and fearful settlements were to 
be welded into a single, bold, united and independ- 
ent, people. 

It was in such a time, in such a community, 
that Ann Story's lot was cast. She was a woman, 
and her woman's heart was a safer guide to justice 
than any that beat under the ermine at Albany. She 
had a masculine understanding, and she took in the 

318 



whole breadth and scope of the question. She was 
wise and sell* -contained, and the secrets of the 
council were safe in her ears. She was brave and 
strong, and what her mind approved her arm did not 
tremble to execute. She gave herself heart and soul 
to the great cause of the people against their tyrants. 
It is not easy to understand today precisely what 
that controversy meant. We must try to stand where 
they did. We look upon our sisterhood of states 
today; we see it resting on the same broad principles 
of free government; we see it bound together and 
bulwarked by the same great constitution; and we 
ask. What did it matter w^hether a little tract of ten 
thousand square miles should fall within the bounds 
of one or another? But in their day it was not so. 
The colonies differed widely. New England was in- 
deed pretty much all alike, — Puritan in religion, 
democratic in government, progressive in spirit, 
choosing her own officers, doing her o\^ti business 
in town-meeting, jealous of interference from over 
sea, chafing under restraint and ready to cast 
off the lightest weight of oppression. New York was 
just the opposite, — churchy in religion, aristrocratic 
in government, Tory in politics, a stumbling block 
throughout the Revolution. The people had small 
voice in affairs of state. Local officers were appoint- 
ed by the governor, and he, of course, by the Crown. 
A few strong families, securing enormous grants of 
land and pilfering from the public purse without 
shame, almost without concealment — these ruled the 
colony. Of course I do not mean that the common 
people of New York were so different from the com- 
mon people of New England. Their heart was in 

319 



the Revolution, — their heart was with the Yermont- 
ers when Vermont was contending with their gov- 
ernment at home. But they were not in control. I 
speak of the men who held the reins of power and 
of the form of institutions which enabled them to 
rule; for it was these that gave the colony its char- 
acter. I suppose we should not readily consent even 
today to become a county or two of New York, 
swallowed up and lost in her seven-million popula- 
tion, our individual traits and traditions surrender- 
ed, our independence a thing of the past. Yet all that 
might happen today with sm^aller loss to us and to 
our children than that which threatened our fathers 
when they declared their determination to be free. 
This is the view that gives dignity and elevation to 
our theme. The quarrel between New York and 
the Hampshire grants was not a mere question of 
boundary. It was not a great law-suit concerning 
land. It was not merely resistance to unjust and 
arbitrary acts that threatened ruin to a thousand 
homes. You cannot rightly estimate the struggle — 
you cannot even understand it — ^until you see in it 
a grapple between aristrocracy and democracy. It 
was a clinch between the Crown and the Common- 
wealth. The principles and practices of government 
that marked the sway of Colden, of Tyron, of Clin- 
ton, came down through that school of kinglj^ pre- 
rogative to George the Third from Charles the First ; 
while the strength of Allen and "Warner, of Fay 
and Chittenden, was drawn from the ideas that 
settled Plymouth and triumphed at Naseby and held 
up the hands of the Long Parliament, — ideas that 
prompted the pen of Milton, the tongue of Yane, 

320 



the heart of Hampden, the sword of Cromwell, and 
finally brought the head of the first Stuart to the 
block. 

The genius of the age was political. Other ages 
have surpassed it in other w-ays, — in letters, in art, in 
science, in conquest, in discovery. But now the 
minds of men were stirred as never before over the 
principles of government. The foundations of civil 
and sacred institutions were being searched as wdth 
candles. The spirit of the time flowered and fruited 
in the Declaration of Independence, in the Statute 
of Religious Liberty for Virginia, in the grand Con- 
stitution of 1787, and in the luminous expositions of 
the Federalist. It was not alone among the great and 
learned that these questions were overhauled. Every 
tavern and fireside w^as boiling with debate. Every 
public assembly was stormy \nth discussion. Where 
two or three w^ere gathered together in the name of 
the people there was liberty in the midst of them. 
The long argument against British encroachment had 
taught every farmer and mechanic the essentials of 
free institutions. "If God spares my life," said 
Tyndale, "I will cause the boy that driveth the plow 
to know more of the scriptures than the Pope does." 
So Jefferson and Franklin, Otis and the Adamses had 
caused the boy that drove the plow in the colonies to 
know more of the basis of social order than the rulers 
of Europe. The same causes that tore America from 
Great Britain tore the New Hampshire grants from 
New York. You cannot limit the application of a 
principle. Emerson, you remember, bade the world 
look out for itself w^hen God should turn loose a 
thinker upon the planet. The Revolution gave Ver- 

321 



mont the principles that justified her own revolt. It 
also gave her time to make her declaration good. 
Who knows what might have been the end if New 
York had been free to turn her whole attention to 
us? Vermont by her zeal in the general cause put 
to shame the halting, lagging policy of New^ York 
and made herself friends among the other colonies. 
When the war was over she had behaved so gallantly 
and grown so strong that her independence was be- 
yond peril. For fourteen years she held her own 
against the world ; and then she took her place in the 
Union, — ^the first of that great in-gathering of states 
which have come to swell the might and majesty of 
the incomparable Republic. 

We look about us on fertile fields, on comfort- 
able, quiet homes, on happy faces of men and women, 
on children who shall live their lives, as we live ours, 
in freedom and security; and then, if we have 
hearts to feel the touch of gratitude, we think what 
it has cost. We see the dark primeval forest with the 
bright stars overhead. We hear the night wind 
blowing in the trees. We hear the screech of panthers 
and the howl of wolves; and here and there amid 
the vast, forbidding soltitude we see the watch-fires 
of the pioneers. 

We see white winter over all the land. We feel 
the biting cold in cabins that will hardly keep the 
snow outside. We lie beneath the rafters and see the 
frosty stars shine through the roof. We see the 
settler crouching by his hearth where the last faint 
ember has expired, trying with infinite pains to bring 
the birth of fire from the cold marriage of the flint 
and steel. We see the boy upon his father's horse, 

322 



winding through forest ways, going twenty miles to 
get a little grain ground into flour for his mother 
to make bread. We see the fever-stricken household 
far from human help, — the lonely burial under the 
drooping boughs. 

We see the woodman leaning on his axe beside 
the half-cut tree, his tanned face dripping with the 
rain of toil, his musket leaning on the log close by. 
We see the little clearing he has made to let the 
sunlight in upon the virgin soil, the narrow patch 
of potatoes or of corn that means life for the coming 
year. We see the rude hut where he lives, the brook 
that brings him water and the slender trail that 
leads back to the safety he has left. We see his wife 
about her homely tasks, his little children at their 
play. A gun speaks from the woods. We see him 
fall. We hear the wild, wavering warwhoop, and 
then we shut our eyes to the horrors that we know 
must come. 

We see the clearings grow, the crops increase, 
the dwellings m,ade tight and warm, and here and 
there a bed of flowers beside the door, a vine that 
clambers up the wall — a touch of beauty and a sign 
of peace. We are there when news comes that this 
land they have bought and paid for, this home they 
have built with labor and pain unspeakable, is not 
their own, — that a court sitting somewhere has de- 
cided they must go. We hear the argument that 
follows, — the brief, clear story of the grants, the ap- 
peal to reason and the law of right in burning, pas- 
sionate speech. We see courage flashing in the eyes 
of women and determination hardening in the faces 
of men. 

323 



We see the turmoil of the settlements when they 
hear of Westminster, of Lexington, of Concord. We 
see them snatch their flintlocks and hurry off with 
Allen to Fort Ti. We see the terror that overspreads 
the land when Carleton's coming is announced and 
Indian massacre is at their doors. We see a group of 
rude, strong men in council. We hear their deep 
and anxious voices. We listen to their bold and care- 
ful plans. And we realize that here, in this low-raft- 
ered room, at this rough table, by this tavern fire, 
courage and foresight and statesmanship, the best 
and soundest of the timfe, are watching by the cradle 
of a new-born state. We think of all the Jiardships 
they endured, of all the perils they encountered, of 
all the ease and comfort they renounced; w^e think 
of all the triumphs they achieved in those desperate 
years making it possible for us to say and say with 
pride, "We, too, are sons and daughters of Ver- 
mont!" 

Long ago in the House of Representatives at 
Washington, John Randolph of Roanoke, desiring to 
taunt the member from New Hampshire, pretended 
to forget the state he came from and referred to him 
as the gentleman from Vermont. Thanks to the 
course of history in that body and out of it, even 
Randolph, if he were living today, would not imagine 
that to call a man a Vermonter was anything but 
praise. 

With a great price our fathers purchased this 
freedom, but we were free born. Yet in spite of all 
they suffered, in spite of all we possess without an 
effort, let us hesitate to say that our lot is a more 
blessed one than theirs. It is not what man has 

324 



done, but what he is doing and is to do, that makes 
his life worth living. Even if they had failed nienmight 
have written over their graves the profound saying 
of Guizot, ''The struggle itself supplied in some 
measure the place of liberty. ' ' The gifts of tlie spirit 
cannot be stored up. The divine manna must be 
gathered by each generation for itself. "No man 
can pay another's debt, or save his brother's soul." 
And so it is that standing with the gifts of the ages 
in their hands men throw away the priceless gems like 
pebbles. Freedom to think, to speak, to act, to wor- 
ship; equal opportunity to broaden the mind and 
better the condition; equal voice and vote in matters 
that concern the state; — these the common blessings 
we see on every side till we forget to value them — 
how men of other times have prayed and fought to 
reach them, seeing them afar off as the vision of 
a new Heaven and a new earth ! Let us not think of 
ourselves more liighly than we ought to think. Better 
bleeding, trampled Russia, travailing in the throes of 
revolution, quivering in every town and hamlet with 
the agonies of a new birth — better that than the 
cities of universal suffrage where men absorbed in 
luxury or greed have given up the seats of govern- 
ment to impudence and theft, — where the weak sons 
of mighty fathers, "seeing rest that it was good and 
the land that it was pleasant have bowed their 
shoulders to bear and become servants unto tribute." 
Let the memorial that we rear speak to us of days 
that were great, not in the multitude of things which 
men possessed, but in the spirit which possessed 
them. Let it say to us once more, as they would say 
to us if they were here : ' ' The man who loves freedom 

325 



for anything but freedom's self was made to be a 
slave. ' ' 

This monument is a reminder that there are 
sisters of Ann Story still living in the world. It is a 
proof that, poor as she was and woman as she was, 
the mark she made upon her time was too deep and 
strong for a century to obliterate. It is a sign to 
those who labor and sacrij&ce that labor and sacrifice 
are not always to be forgotten even here. You that 
in other lands are waging against fearful odds the 
same old fight o:^' freedom, you that toil and agonize 
in unseen places for the good of those that shall come 
after, you that lead the forlorn hopes of the world's 
progress through derision and disgrace, do not 
despair: look here and see another proof that, under 
all its disguises the heart of the race beats true to 
its benefactors. Your day will come. 

"In seeds of laurel in the earth 
The blossom of j^our fame is blown; 

And somewhere, waiting for its birth, 
The shaft is in the stone." 



326 



WENDELL PHILLIPS: THE TRIBUNE OF 
THE PEOPLE 

A Centennial Oration, Delivered in Park Street Church, 

Boston, on the Evening of November 28, 1911, at a 

Meeting Held under the A uspices of the National 

Association for the Advancement of Colored 

People. 

A hundred years ago tomorrow Wendell 
Phillips was born. We have assembled tonight to 
pay our tribute to his memory — one of the purest 
patriots, one ol" the soundest and farthest-sighted 
statesmen, probably the greatest orator, and certain- 
ly the greatest tribune of the people, the New World 
has produced. In other cities men are doing the 
same. But we are happy above all the rest in the 
place of our meeting, the city of his birth. This 
house, indeed, is barren of association with the re- 
form movements to which his life w^as devoted, if we 
except the fact that here in 1829 Garrison made his 
first important anti-slavery address. Here, to para- 
phrase his owu words, he seized the trump and blew 
the first of those jarring blasts by which the land was 
shaken as a leaf is shaken by the wind. Its doors 
were closed to anti-slavery meetings from that hour. 
Yet here we do stand at the center of the scene where 
Wendell Phillips's life of conflict and peril was 
passed. Yonder on Beacon Street he was born. Down 
there on Common Street he died. Over there in 

327 



Essex Street he lived for forty years. In the burial 
ground beside ^is his body lay interred for two years 
before its removal to the green shades of Milton. 
Faneuil Hall, the scene of his first triumph and of 
many later ones, is near at hand, and only across 
the street are Tremont Temple and Music Hall, 
where, just before and during the war, his greatest 
speeches were delivered, and whence the ever at- 
tentive mobs escorted him to his door and received 
his stately, ''Good night, gentlemen." Yes, these 
are the very streets he loved inexpressibly, over which 
his mother held up tenderly his baby feet, and which, 
he swore, if God granted him time enough, he would 
make too pure to bear the footsteps of a slave. 

Wendell Phillips was a born reformer. He 
could never have been satisfied with anytliing short 
of perfection. He contended with the evils of his 
time, but if he were living in our day he would be 
at war with the evils that surround us now ; and if he 
should return to earth a thousand years hence, it 
would be the same. As long as anything better re- 
mained to be achieved, as long as injustice held any 
foothold on the globe, he would still be crying ''for- 
ward," and assailing the powers of darkness with 
all his old-time eloquence and zeal. 

Added to that, he was, from deliberate and pro- 
found conviction, an agitator. He believed that in a 
free country all real progress must be brought about 
by agitation. He accepted Sir Robert Peel's defini- 
tion of the word, "the marshaling of the conscience 
of a nation to mold its laws." But his faith in the 
method went even deeper than that. Not only was 
it the sole means by which reforms could be carried 

328 



through, it was the only means by which governments 
could be kept free. A people that is satisfied with the 
institutions it has gained, that worships the past and 
refuses to go forward to larger freedom, has already 
ceased to be free. In his own eloquent words, * ' If the 
Alps, piled in cold and still sublimity, be the emblem 
of despotism, the ever restless ocean is ours, only 
pure because never still.'' In the widest sense of the 
word he was a democrat. He believed in the people. 
*'The people mean right," he said, "and in the end 
they will have the right." He saw that it is never for 
the interest of the masses that injustice should be 
done. Hence, while it is not safe to trust any class 
by itself, it is safe to trust the people. Not any one 
race, not either sex, but all races, both sexes, all 
sorts and conditions of men, good and bad, learned 
and ignorant, rich and poor. He would give the 
suffrage to all. He would put the ballot even in the 
hands of the most ignorant, and then turn to the state 
and say : ' ' Here is one of your rulers. Now see to it 
that he is educated, or he may give you trouble." He 
believed in universal suffrage because it took bonds of 
the rich and powerful to do their duty by the weak 
and poor. 

Himself an aristrocrat by birth and breeding, 
he became such a tribune of the people as Kome 
never saw. If you look only at the surface of things, 
his career is full of contradictions. Here was a man 
of purest Anglo-Saxon lineage spending his life in 
the service of the dusky sons of Africa; and not only 
that, but claiming for the African race, "by virtue 
of its courage, its purpose, and its endurance, a place 
as near to the Saxon as any other blood in history." 

329 



Here was a devout Christian, adhering to the creed of 
his fathers, yet spurning the nominal Christianity 
of his day, coming out from it and shaking the very 
dust of its threshold from his feet. Here was a man 
dowered with all the gifts of intellect, all the graces 
of person and of speech, "formed," as Emerson de- 
clared, "for the galleries of Europe," and able, if he 
would only stretch out his hand, to take the highest 
prizes of public life, refusing every bribe, turning 
his back on all the world had to offer, and casting in 
his lot with a handful of fanatics. Trained for the 
bar and preeminently fitted for success in the forum, 
he left the courthouse, locked his office door, and re- 
pudiated his oath to support the Constitution. Deep- 
ly interested in politics, and master, as few men 
were, of political questions, he never held an office, 
he never threw a ballot, he refused to swear allegi- 
ance to a government that required him to lend his 
hand to the maintenance of human bondage. De- 
voting himself for thirty years to the overthrow of 
slavery, and living to see his object accomplished in 
the midst of a convulsion that left the anti-slavery 
sentiment dominant in the land and made the once- 
despised name of Abolitionist a passport to public 
favor, he refused to ride into political office on the 
crest of the victorious wave — left others to celebrate 
the victory, while he pushed on, unhesitating and 
almost alone, to new battlefields for suffering human- 
ity. It is plain we must go beneath the surface if we 
would understand a man like this. 

Reformer, agitator, democrat, tribune of the 
people, he was something more: he was a prophet. 
He saw with open eye the secret of the world. He 

330 



saw, under every disguise and through all confusion, 
the clear working of the eternal will. God reigns. 
Falsehood and wrong are only for a day — justice is 
for the ages. In the serene confidence of that vision he 
rebuked the mighty oppressors of his time and cheer- 
ed the hearts of the downtrodden and Ihe weak. 
*'The spirit of ihe Lord was upon him, because he had 
annointed him to preach good tidings to the poor. He 
had sent him to proclaim liberty to the captive and 
the opening of the prison to them that were bound." 
We shall try in vain to understand the Abolition 
movement unless we recognize from the beginning 
that it was a religious movement. It was a revival 
of original, primitive Christianity, and the applica- 
tion of those principles to the United States of 
America in the second quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. These men actually believed in the fatherhood 
of God and the brotherhood of man. They really re- 
membered those that were in bonds as bo and with 
them. They took Christ's word for it that what they 
did unto these, the very least of His brethren, they 
were doing unto Him. It was very simple. How 
should tve like to be slaves? How should tve like 
to have our children sold and torn from our arms? 
How should we like to see our daughters ravished, our 
fathers and m.others beaten till they could not feel? 
How should lue like to be goods and chattels, with no 
rights our masters were bound to respect? "Well, 
that was the system of human slavery that did exist 
in the United States. The Abolitionists were never 
too hard upon that system; they never gave it any 
harsher name than it deserved; and for the very 
simple reason that it would have been impossible. 

331 



They used all the words within their reach, but the 
English language had no words black enough to 
paint it or hot enough to danm it. Unless words had 
been scorpions and sentences had been thunderbolts, 
it would have been impossible for human speech to 
denounce it as it deserved. 

The Constitution of the United States ! We speak 
the words today with affection and with awe, and 
well we may, for it gathers up and bears in its ma- 
jestic bosom the liberties of all; and wherever today, 
under the Stars and Stripes, the meanest child of man 
is denied the equal protection of the law, there is an 
infamous and treasonous violation of the Constitu- 
tion. But I am speaking for the moment of 1835. 
I am taking you back to a time when obedience to 
the Golden Rule was treason, when the Constitution 
was not the surety of freedom but the guaranty of 
bondage, when the snake slavery had its loathsome, 
slimy nest in the very hollow of its shield. I speak 
of a time when if you swore to support the Constitu- 
tion you swore that you would help strike down 
every black man who had the courage to fight for a 
liberty that belonged to him as much as yours be- 
longed to you — when, if you swore to it, you promised 
to turn the trembling, starving fugitive from your 
door, or bind him and send him back to unpaid 
labor, to torture, or to death. That was the Con- 
stitution the Abolitionists refused to lend their hands 
to. Tested by the teachings of Jesus Christ, were 
they wrong or were they right when they refused? 
Did they go too far when they adopted the words 
of the Hebrew prophet and said, it is ''a covenant 
with death and an agreement with hell?" Take the 

332 



case of George Latimer. He was seized in Boston as 
a slave. He had escaped from Norfolk, Virginia, with, 
his wife and children and was living here. Tiiey took 
him on a false charge of theft. He was brought 
before Chief Justice Shaw, in the state court, was 
denied a jury trial, and sent back to Judge Story's 
court, the United States Court, where he lay under 
the beak and talons of the American eagle ; from that 
court he was sent back to slavery. At the bidding of 
the Constitution, lawyer, trader, and priest had 
joined hands to sacrifice the victim. There was a vast 
meeting in Faneuil Hall on the Sunday night before 
he was condemned. Standing before the furious mob 
that had just howled down one speaker, Wendell Phil- 
lips said: ''We presume to believe the Bible out- 
weighs the Statute Book. When I look upon these 
crowded thousands, and see them trample on their 
consciences and the rights of their fellowmen at the 
bidding of a piece of parchment, I say my curse be 
on the Constitution of these United States!" 

The Abolitionists had not come to that extreme 
position willingly or in a moment. They were driven 
to it by the inexorable logic of events. Garrison be- 
gan his crusade by endeavoring to enlist the Church. 
He was nothing but a boy, without friends, 
without money, without prestige, without even 
a press to print his paper on. He turned to one 
after another of the natural leaders of the time, and 
besought them to champion the cause. One after 
another they all refused. Left alone, he said, ''If no 
one else will assail this gigantic system of crime, I 
must do it!" And he did. He was thrown into jail; 
assassins lay in wait for his life; sovereign states set 

333 



a price upon his head; but he kept on, making his 
appeal to the conscience of the American people to 
wash their hands of the sin. Then he found he had 
aroused the hostility of the very forces he had looked 
to for support. Not only would they not lead them- 
selves, they would not suffer another to go forward. 
They turned upon him. Pulpit and press, traders 
and statesmen, college presidents — all the recognized 
leadership of the time cast him out and strove to put 
him to silence. Not content with this, they went on 
to defend the institution itself. The Church apolo- 
gized for it; welcomed slaveholders to its comonunion 
table; opened its pulpit to men-stealers. Merchants 
said, "You must not attack slavery, it will ruin 
trade ! ' ' Politicians said, ' ' If you breathe a word about 
it, you will break up the Union. ' ' The press said, ' ' Men 
who talk like that ought to be mobbed." The pulpit 
murmured "Amen," and confirmed its pious approv- 
al with a text. Bishops wrote books to prove that 
God had always intended the black race to be slaves; 
and many thought it doubtful whether they had any 
souls at all. 

For half a century the South had been in the 
saddle. It had furnished the political leaders of the 
nation. The North, meanwhile, had turned to the 
making of money or the development of the land. 
All the North asked was to be let alone, that it 
might continue to pile up its dollars. What should 
the Abolitionists have done ? If they sat down under 
the threats of the slave power, the liberty to speak 
and print was lost. It was not now a question 
whether the slaves of the South should be set free — 
it was whether the free men of the North sliould 

334 



be made slaves. Should they file their tongues to 
silence upon the gravest moral question of the age 
at the bidding of false priests, hucksters, and dema- 
gogues? Thank God, they said, No! We owe it to 
them that we have free speech today. Even Charming 
acknowledged this. They looked about them and took 
their bearings. Their fathers had formed this Union 
and bound it to slavery. Should they submit to it 
as a necessary evil in the hope that some day the 
Constitution might be amended and slavery removed? 
They were confronted by the fact that slavery was 
on the increase — that the South was determined to 
make it perpetual, that the North submitted, and that 
the powers dominant in Church and State forbade 
even a peaceable discussion of the question. They 
made up their minds that somebody must move. They 
saw that responsibility for the Union, and conse- 
quently for slavery, rested on each and every one. 
They refused to carry that responsibility any longer. 
They ''came out." They appealed to all men to 
come out mth them to form a new Union of free 
states, parting peaceably from the states that were 
determined to remain slave. Their course was radical. 
Yes, it Avas an appeal to the ancient, sacred right of 
revolution. But mark this — the changes required 
were changes that could be brought about only by 
revolution. The South refusing to abolish slavery, 
it was impossible for the North to do so by amending 
the Constitution. When the change finally came, it 
came by way of revolution. Not, indeed, the peacable 
revolution the i^bolitionists proposed, but the awful 
revolution of war. The bloody sequel showed that 
they were right. They approached the question like 

335 



statesmen. They handled it with plain, unanswerable 
logic. They wore the only party at the North that 
did meet the question squarely. At the South there 
was another party that met it with equal boldness 
and directness, asserting that slavery was right — the 
party of secession. They were the only consistent 
parties in the country. There never was any real 
union between the slave states and the free. The 
only approach to it was when the North was utterly 
subservient to the South, that is, when the so-called 
free states were really slave states like the rest. Long 
before Seward had coined his famous phrase, "the 
irrepressible conflict," long before Lincoln had de- 
clared that "a house divided against itself cannot 
stand," yes, a quarter of a century before either of 
those utterances, the same truth had fallen upon deaf 
ears from the lips of Garrison and his fellows. If to 
discern the true nature of the problem and foresee in 
a large way the solution that must be found, while 
choosing the only means that can secure the object — 
if this is to be a statesman, then the right of the 
Abolitionist to that title is beyond doubt or cavil. 
With unquestioning faith in the justice of his cause, 
with unclouded sight of the truth of his position, he 
took the country up by its four corners and shook it 
with a tempest of moral power. Mobs were the proof 
of his evangel. The land was stagnant with apathy, 
and where the wind and lightning of the word came 
there was tumult and disturbance. Mobs were bad 
enough, but they were a thousand times better than 
the sluggish calm that preceded them, the languor and 
torpor of spiritual death. 

If we deny the name of statesman to the Aboli- 

336 



tionist, to whom of his time should we grant it? 
Should it be to the smooth compromisers, like Clay, 
who spread the thin batter of mutual concession over 
the rumbling volcano of irreconcilable forces? Should 
it be to those valorous Northerners who warned the 
South that the annexation of Texas would be the dis- 
solution of the Union, and then, \^'hen Texas was 
annexed, ate their own words and made haste to take 
the hero of that infernal war for their Chief Magis- 
trate? Should it be to a man like Webster, so far 
behind his age or so deaf to the voices of humanity 
that he actually thought the consciences of men 
could be stifled, and that this mighty movement, 
which he sneeringly nicknamed "the rub-a-dub agi- 
tation," could be put dowTi? Should it be to leaders 
like Birney, and Gerritt Smith for a season, w^ho 
tried to make themselves believe that the Constitu- 
tion was an anti -slavery document? Should it be to 
the men who formed the Republican party with the 
avowed purpose of stopping the extension of slavery, 
of abolishing it where the national government had 
the power, and of putting it, as Lincoln said, 'Svhere 
the public mind might rest in the belief that it was in 
the course of ultimate extinction," and yet, when se- 
cession was upon them, went down on their knees, 
in Congress, and offered to adopt a Constitutional 
amendment making it impossible ever to get rid of 
slavery ? Should it be to the men in office in the days 
of the great rebellion, who finally adopted emanci- 
pation at the point of the bayonet, as the last and 
only means of saving the Union, by bringing to their 
side the sympathy of the civilized world and the tardy 
succor of an outraged and alienated God? Or should 

337 



it not rather be accorded to the men who saw and 
declared in 1835 what, thirty years later, all men were 
obliged to see ? They did not need the Dred Scott de- 
cision to show them the plan and purpose of the slave 
power. They Linderstood it from the first. 

I have no quarrel Tvith you if you only mean to 
make excuses foi the millions who never answered to 
their call, who could never rise to the height on 
which they stood. The saving remnant is always, in 
all ages, only a remnant — '"a few leaves upon the 
topmost bough. ' ' But when you deny them the claim 
to statesmanship — when you imply that the measures 
they proposed were impracticable and vain — I ask you 
to point to the popular statesman of their time who 
proposed anything that had a feather's weight against 
the mighty tempest that swept all selfish calculations 
to the Gehenna of civil war. What did the Abolition- 
ists propose? They demanded emancipation — imme- 
diate and unconditional. You came to it at last, not 
willingly, not through conversion, but when God had 
driven you to it with the lash of rebellion and defeat. 
It was only the old excuse — Let us do evil that good 
may come. Men could not trust God to make the right 
successful. They must go into partnership with the 
devil to do the Lord's work. The Abolitionists whose 
faith in God has never been surpassed, who believed 
in doing right and leaving it to Him who made it 
right to see that justice was expedient — they were the 
infidels and heretics of the time. '^If I die before 
emancipation," said Phillips, "^VTite this for m|y 
epitaph, ' Here lies "Wendell Phillips, infidel to a church 
that defended human slavery — traitor to a govern- 
ment that was only an organized conspiracy against 
the rights of men.' " 

338 



The movement begun by Garrison had proceed- 
ed for seven years before his most powerful assistant 
came to his side. Whatever may have been the imme- 
diate occasion of his coming, he owed his anti-slavery 
birth, as he alwaj^s declared, to Garrison. "For my- 
self," said he, "no words can adequately tell the 
measureless debt I owe him. — the intellectual and 
moral life he opened to me." In the principles of ilio 
two men touching their life work there was never 
any, the slightest, antagonism or division. Phillips, 
from the beginning to the end, was a Garrisonian 
Abolitionist. To the service of the cause he brought 
his own rich and peculiar gifts. First of all, his 
character, his personality. Puritan of the Paritans; 
son of the best blood of Boston; trained by Latin 
School, Harvard College, and the law teachers, of 
Cambridge; handsome, athletic, accomplished; pos- 
sessed of a singular personal charm, the talismanic 
gift that moved Emerson to say, "I would give a 
thousand shekels for that man's secret;" endowed 
with such eloquence a Greek would have said that 
on his lips the Attic bees had swarmed and left their 
sweetness; yet with a rapierlike thrust, skillful to 
disarm his antagonist or pierce the thickest armor, so 
that Mrs. Stowe said truly, "In invective no Ameri- 
can or English orator has ever surpassed him;" an 
easy mastery over every sort of audience; breadth 
of view and statesmanlike comprehension of the is- 
sue; unflinching courage, undrooping hope, unfalter- 
ing confidence in the triumph of the truth and the 
mighty power of God. Such was the man who closed 
his office door, recanted his oath of allegiance, and 
niade himself an alien in the city of his fathers, to 

339 



join the Abolitionists. It was the only step he could 
have taken and remained true to his blood, his tra- 
ditions, and the voice of conscience that had led him 
from the cradle. It was a happy choice. It gave him 
the fellowship of the noblest spirits of Ms time. Do 
you think he ever missed the attentions of the class 
he went out from? If you imagine that he cast one 
wistful look behind him, you have yet to gain your 
first glimpse into the character of Wendell Phillips. 
What he said of Garrison may be said of him, ' ' There 
were not arrows enough in the whole quiver of the 
Church and State to wound him." Think what it 
must have meant to the little band of reformers array- 
ed against a hostile nation, whom even John Quincy 
Adams could describe as ''a small, shallow, enthusi- 
astic party," to find in their mi«ist the most eloquent 
man who spoke the English language, whom Henry 
Ward Beecher pronounced "the most admirable 
orator in the world." Said Emerson, ''Strange as it 
may seem, it is true, the world owes the finest orator 
of the age to the movement that enlisted Wendell 
Phillips in the service of the poor, despised slave;" 
and in his journal he added, "Everett and Webster 
ought to go to school to him." Now let the South 
bring on her Randolphs, her Haynes, her Brecken- 
ridges! They shall meet a power of speech as much 
more withering than theirs as the fire of the prophets 
is fiercer than the temper of the mob. There was 
need of such a voice. "Webster," said Phillips, 
' ' had taught the North the 'bated breath and crouch- 
ing of a slave. It needed that we should exhaust 
even the Saxon vocabulary of scorn, to fitly utter 
the haughty and righteous contempt that honest men 

340 



had for men-stealers. Only in that way could we 
wake the North to self-respect, or teach the South that 
at length she had met her equal, if not her master. ' ' 

While John Brown was on trial, Phillips spoke 
at Plymouth Church, from Beecher's pulpit, on 
*'The Lesson of the Hour." "Virginia," said he, 
*4s a pirate ship, and John Brown sails the seas the 
Lord High Admiral of the Almighty, with his com- 
mission to sink every pirate he meets on God's ocean 
of the nineteenth century. I mean literally and exact- 
ly what I say. One on God's side is a majority. 
Virginia is only another Algiers. The barbarous 
horde who gag each other, imprison women for teach- 
ing children to read, prohibit the Bible, sell men on 
the auction-blo(3k, abolish marriage, condemn one- 
half their women to prostitution, and devote them- 
selves to the breeding of human beings for sale, is 
only a larger and a blacker Algiers. John Brown has 
twice as much right to hang Governor Wise as Gov- 
ernor Wise has to hang him." Here burst on the 
speaker a tempest of cheers and hisses. The silver 
voice went on, "You see I am talking of that abso- 
lute essence of things which lives in the sight of the 
Eternal and the Infinite, not as men judge it in the 
rotten morals of the nineteenth century among a herd 
of states that calls itself an empire because it raises 
cotton and sells slaves ! ' ' 

The Abolitionists were right in charging the re- 
sponsibility for slavery upon the North, "Northern 
opinion," said Phillips, "the weight of Northern 
power, is the real slaveholder of America." Edward 
Everett, on the floor of Congress declared himself 
ready to shoulder his musket to put down the first 

341 



slave-rising. Do you wonder that Randolph of Roa- 
noke boasted, ''We do not rule the Morth hy our 
Southern black slaves but by your Northern white 
ones?" The task before the Abolitionists was to 
wake the North to its duty, to give it no rest or peace 
until it should withdraw the only power that made 
slavery possible upon this continenc. By 1860 the 
North had been roused, and was beginning to with- 
draw its power. The South saw the handwriting on 
the wall. ''For the first time in our history," said 
Phillips, "the slave has elected a President of the 
United States." It was exactly so. The slave ques- 
tion, like Aaron's rod, had devoured all other politi- 
cal issues and held the stage alone. True to his teach- 
ings of twenty years, Phillips urged the acknowledg- 
ment of secession and the peaceable separation of the 
states. But neither to Phillips nor to any other 
prophet had it been given to divine the depth and 
intensity of Northern sentiment that clung around 
the flag. When the Stars and Stripes fell from Sum- 
ter and the multitudinous North leaped as one man 
to avenge it, the Abolitionists saw^ that there would 
be no disunion, that the old Union had been swept 
away forever, and that the new^ Union would be free. 
Only the winter before, Phillips had spoken in Music 
Hall at the peril of his life, facing many a murderous 
pistol in his Sunday congregation, and had gone do^\Ti 
to his house In Essex Street followed by thousands 
of angry men. Now he spoke from the same platform, 
but, "for the first time in his anti-slavery life, he 
spoke under the Stars and Stripes, and welcomed the 
tread of Massachusetts men marshaled for war." He 
hailed that sublime rally of a great people to the de- 

342 



fence of the national honor, ''a noble and puissant 
nation rousing herself like a strong man from sleep 
and shaking her invincible locks." There had been 
nothing to match it since that night when the bea- 
cons blazed from Dover to Carlisle and, between sun- 
set and sunrise, all England rose to hurl back the 
Armada. "Today," said he, "the slave thanks God 
for a sight of this banner and counts it the pledge 
of his redemption. Hitherto it may have meant what 
you thought or what I did; today it means 
sovereignty and justice." Then his lips were touched 
by a live coal from the altar, and he burst into pro- 
phecy : ' ' Years hence, when the smoke of the conflict 
has cleared away, the world will see under our banner 
all tongues, all creeds, all races one brotherhood, and 
on the banks of the Potomac the genius of Liberty 
robed in light, four and thirty stars for her diadem, 
broken chains under her feet, and an olive branch in 
her right hand." 

It was one of the happiest coincidences in history 
that the anti-slavery cause should have culminated 
during the Yery years that saw Wendell Phillips in 
the full maturity of his splendid powers. When the 
rebellion began, he was fifty years of age. For more 
than twenty years he had been discussing the slave 
question in all its bearings. He had studied and 
pondered it in all its phases. Every weapon in his 
arsenal was bright w^th service and ready for instant 
use. His armor had been hardened by blows. His 
speech had acquired its perfection of form and was 
now to be charged with unexampled force. In 1861, 
as jMoncure Conway has justly recorded, he delivered 
the greatest speeches that ever have been heard in 

343 



America. No man saw more clearly that the war 
could never be won and the Union established except 
on the basis of freedom. The North might indeed 
over-power her adversary, but she could never make 
a Union between freedom and slavery. This was the 
burden of the prophet during those four long years, 
years of the warrior, filled with "confused noise and 
garments rolled in blood," "with dreadful faces 
thronged and fiery arms." It was his mission to 
rouse the powerful and populous North till it cried 
as with a single voice, "Proclaim liberty throughout 
the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." In the 
nature of things it is impossible to separate and 
weigh the influence of any one man in the formation 
of public opinion, that subtle, all-pervasive force 
which, 

"Like the air, 
Is seldom heard but when it speaks in thunder;" 

but that there was in all that tremendous period no 
clearer or more potent voice, the Muse of History 
will yet affirm. 

When slavery had been abolished he was too 
deeply concerned with the dangers that lay ahead to 
join in the cheers of victory. He kncAV that the old 
hatred of the Negro would find new ways to work 
against him. He would not halt to hang up wreaths 
and trophies or to build monuments. He girded 
up his loins and pushed on to fight for enfranchise- 
ment. He was for taking advantage of the sentiment 
for freedom and equality while it lasted. He struck 
while the iron was hot. He worked while it was 
yet day, knowing that the night was coming wherein 
no man could work. From 1865 to 1870, the most 

344 



alert and strenuous years of his life, he toiled night 
and day for the principle that was finally embodied 
in the fifteenth amendment. To him more than to 
any other man, perhaps more than to all other men, 
its adoption was due. He was right. The night has 
succeeded to the glorious day that gave us the three 
great amendments, worthy to be written in letters 
of gold beside the Petition of Right and Magna 
Charta. The iron that was heated seven times hot 
in the furnace of battle was happily hammered, be- 
fore it was too late, into the forms that cannot easily 
be changed. But the glow is gone. A new generation 
has come upon the scene. Selfishness, prejudice, the 
old spirit of caste, are doing their work; and the 
people that received the tables of stone from the 
mount that burned with fire and shook with the 
thunders of Jehovah, has turned to the worship of 
the golden calf, and is taking its pleasure at the 
banquet. All this Phillips foresaw and foretold. To- 
day not a state of the old Confederacy records the 
Negro's vote. The fifteenth amendment is sneered 
at by millions at the North as the greatest blunder 
of the age. Today law journals publish labored ar- 
ticles to prove the amendment void. And yet what 
is the fifteenth amendment? What does it declare? 
Merely this, that a man's right to vote shall not 
depend upon his color or his race. The South is as 
free as ever to make the right depend upon any 
reasonable test that can be applied to black and 
white alike, education, property, what she will. Why 
need she resort to miserable subterfuges to let in her 
poor, ignorant, and vicious whites, while she ex- 
cludes even the virtuous, the learned, and prosper- 

345 



ous among the blacks? Is this the courage, is this 
the sense of fairness, of the Anglo-Saxon race? 

The black race, in less than fifty years of 
freedom, has justified every claim of the Abolition- 
ists. It has shown itself brave in battle, faithful in 
peace, eager to learn, capable of acquiring and control- 
ling wealth, and able to produce noble and far-sighted 
leaders of its own blood. In spite of race prejudice 
and political betrayal it has got its feet on the solid 
ground of material well-being and is reaching out its 
hands with slow, patient, but irresistible power to 
the great prizes of the world of effort and ideas. Its 
progress during the last half -century mil be one of 
the marvels of history. Every man who loves justice 
or humanity must rejoice at such a sight. We who 
have united to demand of the American people the 
rights guaranteed by the Constitution to every child 
born under the flag, and who are resolved never to 
rest until those rights have been secured in fact as 
well as in name — we have reason to believe that the 
master spirits of the earlier crusade are with us now. 
As those who fought by Lake Regillus, in the old 
days of Rome, saw riding on their right the Great 
Twin Brethren in snow-white coats of mail, and 
knew that 

"The gods who live forever 

Were on Rome's side that day," 

SO in every charge we make against the forces of 
oppression we have a right to feel that Garrison and 
Phillips, the twin warriors, the great white brothers, 
are riding at our side. 

The anti-slavery cause was only one branch of 
a movement that embraces the world and reaches 

346 



through all time. It is the triumphant progress of 
democracy — the movement of the common people to 
take possession of their own. Phillips was never 
narrow enough to have his heart bound up with 
one race only. He was too true a soldier to sit down 
content with any partial triumph. When the Anti- 
slavery Society disbanded in 1870 his last words to his 
companions were: "We sheathe no sword. We only 
turn our front upon a new foe." Looking out over 
Christendom he saw, as he said, ''that out of some 
three hundred or four hundred millions, at least one 
hundred millions never had enough to eat.*' He 
saw the w^ealth of the world in the hands of com- 
paratively few, and he saw^ that this wealth had been 
created not by the few, but by the toil of the many. 
With brave, unflinching logic he announced his prin- 
ciple, ''Labor, the creator of wealth, is entitled to all 
it creates," and avow^ed himself willing to follow it 
to its ultimate conclusion, to the utter abolition of 
the wage system, and the substitution, for cut- 
throat competition, of a fair and just cooperation. He 
had begun his study of the labor question as early as 
1861 or 1862, when no journal except the anti-slavery 
papers would ^ve an inch of space to its discussion. 
But in 1871 the workingmen of IMassachusetts had 
formed a party and invited him to be their candidate 
for governor. He consented, not because he wished 
or was willing to be elected if that had been pos- 
sible, but only to advance the agitation. To the 
laboring men he gave this characteristic advice: 
"Write on your ballot boxes, 'We never forget. If 
you do us a wrong, you may go down on your knees 
and say I am sorry I did the act, and it may avail you 

347 



in heaven, but on this side of the grave, never!' '' 
And so far as worMngmen have succeeded in their 
political aims, it has been because they have followed 
that advice. 

It would require a separate address to recount 
his services to other causes. The wrongs of Ireland 
claimed his voice; the wrongs of the Indian, the 
Chinaman, the Jew. He spoke for the temperance 
movement, woman suffrage, prison reform, the aboli- 
tion of the gallows. He taught race prejudice its 
most wholesome lesson in his lecture on the great 
San Domingo black, ''the soldier, the statesman, the 
martyr," Toussaint L'Ouverture; he gave religious 
bigotry its most stinging rebuke in his Daniel 'Con- 
nell; he brought religion itself to its most vital test 
in Christianity a Battle, Not a Dream; and in 1881, 
in the most finished effort of his life, his great Phi 
Beta Kappa address at Harvard, he arraigned the 
timid scholarship of his time for having been a clog 
on the wheels of reform, and turned respectability 
pale by showing it that the Nihilists were only the 
Washingtons and Warrens, the Patrick Henrys and 
Sam Adamses of Russia. In the last fifteen years of 
his life he fulfilled more perfectly than any other 
American his own definition of the agitator. ''The 
agitator," said he, "must stand outside of organiza- 
tions, with no bread to earn, no candidate to elect, 
no party to save, no object but the truth — to tear a 
question open and riddle it with light." 

If he were living today how he would rejoice 
over those six stars in the suffrage banner — six states 
that have risen above the bigotry of sex. How he 
would be fighting for the initiative and referendum 

348 



and overthrowing every ar^gument against them, ar- 
guments that have no foundation save in the old Tory- 
distrust of the people. We have not begun to come 
up with Wendell Phillips, but such achievements are 
signs that we are on his trail. He was a prophet 
even in the matter of mechanics. Addressing the 
school children of Boston in 1865, he said: "We have 
invented the telegraph. But what of that? If I 
live forty years I expect to see a telegraph that will 
send messages wdthout wires and both ways at the 
same time." It gives one a weird feeling to re- 
member that it was almost exactly forty years from 
that date that Marconi's wonderful invention was 
given to the world. Radical, progressive, as he was, 
never satisfied with^what had been attained, he had 
yet the poet's leverence for the past. How fond he 
was of quoting those words: 

"The great of old, 

The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule 

Our spirits from their urns." 

His lecture ou Lost Arts, prepared on the spur of 
the moment, but repeated over two thousand times, 
is as fine a tribute as was ever paid to the forgotten 
genius of antiquity. He sympathized with every 
attempt to save for future ages "the places w^here 
bold men spoke or brave men died." He plead in 
vain for the preservation of the Hancock House. He 
plead, not in vain, for the preservation of the Old 
South. Its dark walls stand today a proof and trophy 
of his eloquence. 

To read his speeches you would say they must 
have come flaming from the furnace. You seem to 
hear the lion roar of Mirabeau and picture to your- 

349 



self the stormy action of Demosthenes. Yet his voice at 
its loudest was like a silver clarion, and oftener 
would remind you of a flute, while his action was at 
all times the grace of a Greek god. Higginson said: 
*'No matter how humble the client he represented, 
he always had tlie air of the grand seigneur." He 
really introduced a new style in oratory. He made 
the old bombast ridiculous. Such rantings put you 
in mind of savages who beat tom-toms and yell and 
screech to appall their enemies; but Phillips remind- 
ed you of the Spartan heroes, who marched, as Mil- 
ton said, 

"to the Dorian mood 
Of flutes and soft recorders," 

going forth smiling and crowned with roses to those 
deadly combats from which it was their point of 
honor never to retreat. A Southerner who listened 
to him in the old days, expecting to hear a noisy 
demagogue, could only describe him as ''an infernal 
machine set to music." 

Severest of all the public speakers of his time, he 
carried in his bosom the tenderest of hearts. 

"For all the lost and desolate 

Woman and man revile, 
Saint Francis at the cloister gate 

Had not so sweet a smile." 

How close he kept to the people! Lived for 
forty years down there on Essex Street, and when 
the city tore doAvn his house and ran the pavement 
over its ruins, moved over to Common Street, to a 
house as near like the old one as he could find. Bom 
on Beacon Hill, died in Common Street — that seems 
to tell the story of the man. In the morning, when 

350 



it was possible, he would go to the Criminal Courts 
to lend his hand to some poor outcast falsely accused 
or honestly desiring to do better. One night he was 
accosted by a woman of the street here on the Com- 
mon Mall. Looking in his pure face she saw her 
mistake and apologized. Mr. Phillips drew her on 
to talk, walked back and forth with her under the 
elms until he had her story, then took her to a home 
where she became the woman (rod intended her to 
be. 

"Douglas, Douglas, tender and true!" 
If we had a right to draw aside the curtain that hides 
his home life, what an example of chivalrous devo- 
tion Avould be brought to view! — devotion not with- 
out its rich reward, since from the seclusion of that 
sick chamber came the highest inspiration to heroic 
words and deeds. 

Not many men deserve to be remembered on 
their hundredth birthday; but Wendell Phillips's 
second centennial may be better observed than his 
first. We may be sure his name will be written high- 
er a hundred years hence than it is today. When 
the reforms he advocated have become accomplished 
facts, when prisons have been turned into moral 
hospitals, when society has learned to erect '*a guide- 
post at the beginning of the road instead of a gal- 
lows at the end of it," when cities have sloughed off 
the grogshop and the brothel, when woman has been 
summoned into civil life and has become the yoke- 
fellow of man, no longer his plaything or his drudge, 
when the hands that create the wealth of the world 
have learned to hold it and to handle it for the good 
of all, and every child bom in America has an equal 

351 



chance in life, when the dark-browed multitudes for 
whom he toiled and suffered have joined the en- 
franchised millions that are yet to trample all op- 
pression under their feet — do you think that in that 
day the name of Wendell Phillips is likely to be for- 
gotten? Whatevsr we may say, do you imagine 
it will be the judgment of coming times that he con- 
demned the tyrants of his own age too severely? 

The word of the Lord came to Wendell Phillips, 
as to the propljets in all ages, * ' Cry aloud and spare 
not!" Thank God, he did not spare! Thank God 
for every bitter, biting, blasting speech that woke 
a sluggard land to its duty and made the ears of recre- 
ant statesmen tingle with shame! Would that in this 
day another might arise like unto him, so gifted, so 
consecrated, so fearless, so mighty in the power of 
the Spirit, to rebuke the cowards and oppressors of 
our time. Wrong still walks the earth, the expecta- 
tion of the poor perishes, and the needy are for- 
gotten. Oh that he himself were here to defend 
the mighty bulwarks of liberty he labored to build 
up within the Constitution! Oh that he were here 
to shame his own race into honest dealing with the 
black — to lay open to scorn the sneaking cowardice 
that makes laws to give white ignorance and vice the 
ballot and deny it to the black, not daring to meet 
its rival in the open field and lay down one equal test 
for all, but skulking behind "grandfather clauses," 
while it taxes the black man for parks and libraries 
and shuts liim out from both ! Oh that he were here to 
damn as it deserves the hellish hatred that. North 
as well as South, condemns men unheard because they 
are black, tortures innocent and guilty at the stake, 

352 



yes, even in the Quaker Commonwealth, drags the 
wounded black boy from the hospital on his pallet 
and burns him in his blood — the shameless perjury 
that acquits the lynchers, the brazen impudence that 
finds unwritten law to clear cold-blooded murder with 
the sanction of the court! Oh that he were here to 
find some fitting name for states that, pretending to 
be democratic, hold seats in Congress for millions of 
men whose political rights they have villainously 
filched away, voting now, not as in old days for three- 
fifths of the Ne^'roes, but for all ! He should be here 
to pour contempt upon communities that let the 
hands of infants do their work, rob the schoolhouse 
and the playfield to run the factory, and do not wince 
when they 

"Hear the children weeping, O my brothers, 
Ere the sorrow comes with years," — 

the sodden dullness that suffers greed and cunning to 
strike hands and tax the bread and meat, the coal and 
clothing of millions to fill the pockets of a few — 
the purblind prejudice that still holds woman back 
from her part in civic life while it leaves the grog- 
shop and the brothel free to rot the heart out of great 
cities! Oh that he would come and unfrock those 
time-serving priests that have no word for the giant 
iniquities of their day, dumb dogs that will not bark 
when the thief is climbing into the fold! Would 
that he could wield once more the fearful lash that 
made bribed statesmen cringe and tremble and the 
backs of apostate judges smart under their robes! 
But not to rebuke only — would that he were with us 
now to cheer and lead! One blast upon that silver 
bugle would be worth a hundred men. The battle 

353 



has moved onward; there are fighters in the field. 
It is not an hour for curse or lamentation. It is an 
hour for the consecration of knighthood for vigil, 
and for vow. We do not come to praise you, Wendell 
Phillips; you have received alread^^ your eternal 
great reward. We have come to catch the glow of your 
great spirit £nd resolve to make our lives like yours. 
Here, where a century ago your life began we are 
gathered to celebrate your coming with deep thanks- 
giving and with solemn joy, pledging ourselves anew 
to the grand purpose to which your life was devoted 
— a war against all oppression for the liberty of all! 



H 18 89 .^^i 354 

W40 























■1 



•^-^ /Or . , # • 




//Av;;;/^. /^'^^' '^- ^* *^ 



j^ y Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
« <^ «l^ ^\ Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 

♦ ^7 «^. <» Treatment Date: Oct. 2009 



'••** A<^ ^«. "^^^^ *'***\'^^ •vi^^'^o PreservationTechnologies 

5 .-^ »**_r<^tV-t» "^ C ^^/ITTPs^ ^ A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

4^ * '^^^uT^!^ ""^ 4 ^^^^^* 111 Thomson Park Drive 

^*Q V^ ^^y^g^yHi^ ♦ '^^ Cr Hf^W^"* Cranberry Township, PA 16066 



- % ** 







i^^o^ V'^^'V 



: *^^«^ : 






•^^ '^^/ J'\ '-yws ** \ '-Hf ♦• «^'% 






'»• -i'®^^^ V 












7 .^^-^K 






* -i^ 



'••<** 






"> .iik:*. 



<?.. * ♦^ 



'» _jP^^^ V 









:»i-^ V imi: **-** :-lK- \,' 



^ BOOKS ndm: H <. ♦^f?^ ,G^ ^ -oVT* ^ '^•^ 



^^y'^^ 











